Atlanta Fed's Raphael Bostic on Monetary Policy During Extreme Uncertainty
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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Hello and welcome to another episode of the Oddlots Podcast. I'm Tracy Alloway.
And I'm Joe Wisenthal.
Joe, we're here in Atlanta.
I've never I'm embarrassed, I've never really spent any time in Atlanta so far, but it seems lovely. We're in midtown. I had uh southern food last night fried chicken. How much fried stuff
have you eaten?
I have to be really careful because I will devour the food while I'm here.
So I went out with our producer Carmen last night and we had fried chicken, fried okra, fried green tomatoes. I think there were a few other fried things. It was so good.
It was so good.
All right, but we're not actually here. We're not here just to talk about Southern food. We are actually here to interview someone very important. That's right. President of the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta. And I think it's really interesting to be interviewing someone from the Fed at this particular moment in time, because just last week we had an FOMC meeting. They decided to keep rates unchanged. But then just a couple days after that, over the weekend, And we had some pretty big news.
Well, that's right. So obviously it's an extraordinarily difficult time for literally everyone to understand what's going on with the economy. The Fed, in particular, people have talked about, oh, it's in a tight spot, right? Because there perhaps are signs of economic deceleration. There's the potential inflationary impulse of the tariffs, and the tariffs themselves keep moving. That being said. I was sort sort of knock on wood. between the recent detente, so to speak, with China, maybe things are quieting down. Maybe we'll at least have some trade policy stability for some period of time, which maybe makes things today slightly easier to understand or anticipate than they might have even been a week ago.
That is the big question. So why don't we get right to it? We're speaking with Raphael Bostik. He is, of course, the president of the Atlanta Fed. So Raphael, thank you so much for coming on AllBots.
Well, thank you for having me and welcome to Atlanta.
Thank you. Thanks for having us. So I'm gonna start with the I guess the obvious question, but you know, last week after the FOMC meeting, you put out a statement saying that your baseline outlook is for the economy to be less resilient than you expected at the beginning of the year. Given the news over the weekend, a potential truce at least for ninety days between China and the US, does that change your outlook?
A little. I would say a The overarching message that I've gotten from the people I talked to and from our survey responses and other things, and it's the reason why I was comfortable with our policy action last week is that there's just a tremendous amount of uncertainty out there. And because of that, businesses and households as well. Aren't really comfortable making big decisions. And as a consequence, the amount of energy I would have expected to see in the economy is gonna be less than uh and that expectation was at the beginning of this year. It looks like it's gonna be less than that for the remainder of this year. And then we'll have to see how things play out to determine how much less. But that uncertainty definitely is weighing on consumers and business leaders alike.
Joe and I have been joking about trying to get through podcasts nowadays without saying the word uncertainty. I don't think we've succeeded.
It's literally never going to happen. That word comes up in every episode. But actually going back to Tracy's question, what does that mean the economy less resilient?
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:00–5:41
2
Why did the Fed keep rates unchanged after the latest FOMC meeting?
5:41–15:14
3
How does uncertainty about tariffs and China‑U.S. trade affect the Fed’s outlook?
15:14–24:14
4
What does “less resilient economy” mean for growth and inflation expectations?
24:14–32:32
5
Why does the Fed see low risk of a recession despite slowing activity?
32:32–41:29
6
How are wage growth trends influencing inflation forecasts under tariffs?
41:29–45:23
7
What role do small‑business surveys play in shaping Fed policy decisions?
45:23–49:05
8
How might supply‑chain reshoring and tariff rates affect future rate cuts?
49:05–50:12
Speakers
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