Monetary Missteps: Are Central Banks Leading Us Astray?

Eric Chemi 0:05
Welcome to Wealthion. I’m your host, Eric Chemi. Today we are joined by Kathleen Hays. She’s the editor in chief of central bank central talking about policymaking and the leading policymakers from around the world. Kathleen, thank you so much for joining me today.

Kathleen Hays 0:20
It’s wonderful to be here, Eric.

Eric Chemi 0:21
having been a leading economic journalist right, going back many years here at Bloomberg, CNBC, other places, people recognize you they know you, what are the conversations that that people are asking you? What are the questions they come to you with in terms of where do you see the macro outlook? Or do you think the Feds got rates? Right? What do you find people are asking you a lot of right now, when

Kathleen Hays 0:42
I run into people, I think it’s clearly the Fed. Now, one of the things that made a big difference, in fact, in the last couple of months or something was noticed people were putting in the grand context of where the US is and where the global economy is going, what that ultimate is going to be for central banks would be the World Economic Outlook. And one of the things that World Economic Outlook showed is that inflation is still a problem, for example, they’re concerned about the slowdown in China. Those are the kinds of things that come to the table, when I am out and about in other places, if I’m talking to somebody, inflation is a very big question. I mean, it’s a it’s a big question for regular people, not necessarily linking it to what the Feds gonna do. Although I think more and more people are getting at least a simple sense, a basic sense of GE, Federal Reserve, you know, interest rates, people already see that their mortgage rates, if they want to sell a house and move, you know, they can’t get out of 3% 30 year because they don’t want to go to a 6% plus 30 year. And I think those things are tying everybody not just Wall Street, not just investors, but a lot of people to what is happening on the monetary policy side on the central bank side.

Eric Chemi 1:47
What did you think of because now you mentioned people, normal people talking about inflation? What did you think of that whole Super Bowl push by Joe Biden to talk about shrink inflation? Like, like, no one knew this until he discovered it a month ago? To me, it seemed a little bit ridiculous.

Kathleen Hays 2:03
Well, you know, I’m scratching my head over that one. I guess the first thing that comes in mind is whip inflation. Now, Alan Greenspan decades ago, Gerald Ford, the president, then less were buttons to bring inflation down, it didn’t work. The problem is, are the challenges I should say? That sure there’s shrink inflation, you make a candy bar, that’s seven ounces instead of nine ounces, and you charge the same price. The question of deflation we’re dealing with now, though, is much bigger than that. And it has a lot to do with the things that were done during the pandemic, to prevent a depression was what the worst that people could fear and, and keep the economy on track, both on the monetary policy side, and on the fiscal policy side, you know, to cut rates to zero and pump $5 trillion into the economy in a year. And it certainly had the result of keeping the economy going and look where we are now. So we’ve got economy going seems relatively strong. There’s some question marks over it. But at the same time, inflation did get out of control. And once you, once you get it out of the bag, it’s hard to bring down, but also I think, what’s bothering people? And I think it’s hard for, you know, if you’re in a campaign election campaign, and you’re the president is team, you know, you want to say hey, you guys, we were bringing inflation down is going well, the problem is a price level so much higher, it’s still higher. And that’s what people are still feeling and seeing.

Eric Chemi 3:35
Right like that’s the thing that we all know, is consumers. But the data forgets that in the wake of retirement inflation. But that’s a growth percentage, right? Everything’s 25% More expensive than it was four years ago, right? So something that was $1 is now $1.25. So okay, hey, it’s only going to be $1.26. Now, but that’s still way more than it wasn’t, it’s never going back to $1. It’s never going back to $1 $15.10. So we’re not paying that price forever, even if even if we had zero inflation from now on. We’re paying these hugely elevated prices.

Kathleen Hays 4:08
And I think that the optimists are thinking, Well, wait a minute, you know, wages will continue to rise, because people are going to continue to be in a better position to get those wage increases. Number one, there’s still some labor shortages in certain industries. And at least the latest numbers suggest that productivity how much you produce per hour of your labor has gone up, although speaking to Jason Furman a couple of weeks ago, who is the former head of the Council of Economic Advisers under Barack Obama and Jason fine economist and he calls them as he sees them. He said, Yeah, productivity was really high last year, but he thinks that productivity does that go up and then be flattened out. So we don’t know if we can create 100 employee count on that. But I think that these are all question marks out there. And it’s in the thing about the prices coming back to you they might do you remember, back in? When was it I guess it was when the Fed got worried that inflation was wasn’t going up to 2%. Remember, it would be 1.7 1.8, maybe be 1.9. But it just couldn’t hit the target. And for about a decade, there was Well, first of all, for a couple of decades, there was competition from China in terms of wages, while people say, Oh, Kathleen, it doesn’t matter. Well, I think if you were some kind of manufacturing worker in the US and things went overseas to China, or maybe even Mexico, you do think is a problem. Also technology. And I think one of the thing price discovery, right? Because how could you go, you couldn’t go on the internet and poke around if I oh, gee, I really like that sweater, you know, made by, you know, Kathleen Hayes productions. I, I want to buy it, I’m willing to spend whatever for it. Let’s say it’s 50 bucks. Oh, like on the internet. Hey, there’s Kathleen’s sweater. It’s it’s only 40. So what do I do hop on the internet. And even if I didn’t hop on the internet, maybe I shopped around. And I think there was so much price competition, that kind of LoL does it brought inflation down? And so could that happen? Again? I don’t know. Maybe it could maybe we will get something like that again. But right now, we seem to be a long way from that.

Eric Chemi 6:14
I saw a story in The Wall Street Journal this week about how it was in the Thursday paper, how the hotel industry can’t find enough workers right now. So because there’s a labor shortage there, it’s all the COVID stuff, right? They had to reduce, now they can’t get enough people back. And so travel prices will be elevated this year, because the pricing that they have to pay to get people to work there is high. And it goes to a lot of what we’re talking about still these post COVID effects, or the you know, if this labor market is so tight, what are we actually doing? Right? Like where is the right balance of, of policies, I don’t know, if you have an opinion on what you’re seeing, and how maybe you would do something different if you were in those seats?

Kathleen Hays 6:59
Well, the fact of the matter is, it’s hard to get people to go to work if they can find another job that pays them more. I was a restaurant worker years ago, for free, very serious when when I was kind of in between finishing my master’s degree in economics and going out and getting a professional job, waited tables to the bar, and worked hard. And that’s what people do in that industry. But I think if there’s well, even just food delivery in New York City and Manhattan, you know, we have a great diner in our neighborhood beyond, I’ll give you know, Sammy and his team, a little pitch there, that he’s there, they have had a hard time getting people back because people who might have worked and come to work and started maybe washing dishes and then cooking on the line, they’re much more likely to say Instacart, my, you know, my local fairways full of people. So that’s part of it. But I think also, there is still a relative to the number of people who are changing jobs, looking for jobs coming back in the labor force, that doesn’t quite meet the demand in certain industries, then we got tech layoffs, but that’s very high level and very high paid jobs. I think we’re talking more about all the services jobs. And that’s where we see some tightness.

Eric Chemi 8:17
What do you think about that? You mentioned the tech layoffs, because the markets at all time highs, these tech companies are exploding in a good direction up and then they keep laying people off. So I don’t know what I’m supposed to make of that. If they thought they were in a strong position. They would keep those workers because hard to find good workers, they especially engineering talent, they would keep them put them somewhere or like not lay him off, because if we’re growing, we might need them in three weeks for something. To me, it feels very weird. Why are we buying stocks at all time highs when those companies themselves are getting rid of people?

Kathleen Hays 8:48
Well, this is not my area of expertise. So just from afar, let me say number one, what some of those tech workers are, they’re getting laid off. I wonder how quickly they’re fine jobs. Everyone’s so hot right now on AI. AI is going to be the biggest thing last 50 years, it’s going to transform the landscape. Everybody’s got to own that stock. Everybody’s got to, you know, be every company, every CEO is Oh, yeah, we’re investing in AI, because they know they have to, because everybody else is. And when if I said oh no, I think I’m going to wait and see what happens with AI. Right? Maybe there may be some of these big tech companies are saying, we have this skill of worker. And there’s another skill of worker we need. And also there’s a lot of stories, I think that I’ve finally noticed about how high paid a lot of these tech workers were every single story about meta right? About how they had so many workers that basically just sat there like they’d heard tons of people they were paying and like maybe $253,000 a year. And maybe those are some of the workers that are getting peeled off now as they take another look at where they are, what they need and where things are going.

Eric Chemi 9:49
I know you’re not the expert on tech, right? You’re more of the macro econ person, the econo queen, but obviously the tech story is important. The AI story is important it filters into the cloud. rotations that are happening at the FOMC meeting right at the at the BOE meeting the BOJ money, when you talk to Central Bank policymakers, how much do they worry about the impact of AI in terms of what it’s going to mean for future, your job levels, unemployment levels, and all that?

Kathleen Hays 10:17
I think probably most of them isn’t something I’ve talked specifically just like even in the last two or three months with people about the it’s going to play out. And nobody knows how quickly it’s going to play out. Nobody knows if there’s going to be job destruction, right? Because there’s certain kinds of jobs that won’t need to be done by people, people just Oh, plug in the AI and let them write that report, right, or whatever else. I could do all kinds of things. But I think that that it, it still remains to be seen. And when I see stories like, oh, yeah, I noticed that my bio was up. And it said something completely untrue about me that happened to this woman, Anita nikal teicholz, who wrote this book, The Big Fat surprise, if yours is a great book about oh, what I consider the real deal on diet, which is protein, low sugar, watch out for the carbs, it’s pretty easy to see that that causes a lot of health issues to be moving too much in the wrong direction anyway. And she had, she tweeted something about how a Gemini had there was something written by them that said she had lied about me or things were completely false. And she said, Well, actually, I let them know. And they apologized, and they changed it. But to me, I just wonder how I think those they’re still kind of early hurdles. And people get I think people everyone wants to be ahead and talk about this. And other people jumped on with chat GBT. And now they go, Well, I guess maybe chat GBT isn’t so great. I mean, this is to me still a little bit, the beginning or lock the beginning. And I don’t think the Fed is going to take any position on it right now when it’s not really the main thing driving their decisions. But you know, certainly for investors, it’s, it’s something you’ve got to have. And it’s just, it’s just too early. But, you know, the tech bubble of back in the early days, but NASDAQ went over the first time to 5000. And that was huge that things things where we are today as necessarily, we’re going to be down the road. This is too early, I think for anybody, like an economic policymaker to think that this is something they really have to be responding to, although you can be sure they’re all watching it very closely. And they have lots of people who are watching closely inside the Fed.

Eric Chemi 12:27
You know, speaking about the Fed economic policymakers, we’ve had some guests on recently. You may know some of them, you know, their, their their characters in the financial media space. And they’ve really been very pointed in their, their criticism of the Fed, in terms of it’s the wrong policy. It’s been the wrong policy. It’s a lot of groupthink. There’s not enough cognitive diversity, they’re there, they’ve been wrong about a lot of things, you know, going back from COVID. And even up until now, what is your what is your take on that? Do you feel like they’re generally on the right track? Or generally, they’ve got the wrong people making the wrong decisions?

Kathleen Hays 13:05
Well, I know that one of the first people who comes to mind is someone I just interviewed, and his name is Charlie Calomiris. Charlie is a business finance professor at Columbia Business School. Charlie is a member of the shadow Open Market Committee, when people who are I think a lot of them tend to be people who are kind of like the, the, I don’t want to say it’s the it’s like the core of the Fed that you fight inflation, you want to make sure you don’t let inflation get out of control. And you could even harken to someone like John Taylor, Stanford University, the Taylor rule, there’s certain things you do, Charlie made the same point to me. In fact, I was out in Las Vegas sitting in my hotel room, doing an interview with him, before I went down to the Las Vegas money show and did some things with them. And Charlie was quite adamant that I think this was this was after the federal working with the Fed minutes that came out, he thinks they’ve been wrong for a long time, their models are wrong, it’s not getting the right results. And because they ought to look at their model again, because if you keep making mistakes, and you’re not, you’re not making the correct forecasts, you’re not making some of the correct decisions, then it’s time to take another look. Now he’s on one end of the spectrum, there are other people you could speak to who are, you know, former Federal Reserve officials, and certainly at the Fed now, who who see it differently, but I think these questions, I think those are legitimate questions. I think one thing I’d like to urge everybody to remember is, people who work at the Federal Reserve people are in this field, they, they dedicated their life to it, right? They’re not there to make a ton of money. They’re fascinated by it. They’re conscientious people, they’re doing their best. So I think everybody should just kind of cool off a little bit sometime and say, You know what, monetary policy is not exactly a science. You can will the Taylor rule now in just a minute, but it is also kind of an art and I want to ask any investor Oh, do you get all your trades, right? Do you get all your calls? Right? It and that’s different as well, but I just think it’s a very important decision. Question. And I’m happy everyone’s looking at it. Because I think the more everybody pays attention to monetary policy in the Federal Reserve, this is one of the most powerful institutions in our country, and every central bank tends to be in many countries. So it’s a good thing for us to be all debating and trying to educate ourselves about in an intelligent way.

Eric Chemi 15:16
I hear what you’re saying about, they’re trying their best, they’ve dedicated their lives to this, but I think about in related fields, right, if you’re an investor, professional investor, hedge fund, mutual fund, you know, private equity, whatever it is, if you’re wrong enough, you get fired your investors pull their money, you don’t have a fun, you’re out of it. Just

Kathleen Hays 15:34
Well a lot of them just walk down the street and get their next job. Come on, I’ve seen a lot of people survive in the high levels in financial services, right?

Eric Chemi 15:43
They do after after you blow up blow up once, then you go down?

Kathleen Hays 15:48
Well, I don’t know. I think that I don’t think it’s I don’t think it’s a given that you your jobs, your jobs done, if you got it wrong, you just you just have to find the right group to go to, and maybe they like, you know, but it’s I’m not I’m not quite on page with that. I don’t think that the financial industry is necessarily that definitive in that sense.

Eric Chemi 16:07
It is, it is some because the other example I was going to use and you’re probably right about the job flexibility is, if you’re a professional sports coach, right, NBA coach, NFL coach, those guys are getting fired. You know, you three years on average, you lost, right if if you’re a normal coach, so don’t even make it one year. But then they get their other job at the other team. Right. And a couple years later down the street. So so there is some flexibility. But there’s it’s not like there’s another fed in the United States to coat. That’s true. That’s right. Yeah, yeah. Let me put it this way. If in hindsight, we’ve seen mistakes that the Fed has made. No one is getting fired over that. It’s just hey, I hope you learned your lesson. And I hope you can do better.

Kathleen Hays 16:45
I don’t think it’s just that I think there’s a reputational issue. I think Jay Powell realizes, in fact, who made this point to me recently about Jay Powell, because I think, you know, at the end of the year, the Fed signaled, Okay, we’re done hiking, and we’re probably heading towards rate cuts. And that’s what the dots show. That’s what their median forecast for rates are going 2024 showed. And then the numbers kind of turned around and inflation, you know, there had some surprises. And I was interviewing a former Fed bank president, maybe it’ll come to me, who I know was Dennis Lockhart, he was president of the Atlanta Fed and that he was in line before Raphael Bostic, who is there now for a while. But Dennis said he and he doesn’t he’s I don’t know what Jay is thinking. But I think part of this is he he’s thinking about his legacy. He wants to he wants to get this right. You know, he did, you could say he led things, or in many ways in the right direction. But for inflation, they could say, well, they we didn’t get a recession during the pandemic, right. We didn’t get the depression, they were so aggressive, every program to serve, you know, save every kind of bond and credit market, you could, but if he doesn’t get this, right, and if this Fed doesn’t, this is their legacy. And they will go down in history as a central bank that made a big mistake, maybe even failed, if they don’t get inflation down. I think a lot of people figure they’re on their way to get that. But so I do think it’s no, you don’t actually get fired. But because you’re it’s not I mean, it’d be you get I guess there’s other things you can get fired from in the government. And I suppose if you did something awful, they could fire you could be fired. But I don’t think that’s the point of it as much and I maybe we could change the system. The problem with that is, though, what last thing we want to do is let Congress control the Fed. Because whoever’s you’d say, oh, whoever’s office is gonna say, oh, cut rates, please, oh, I don’t care how inflation is I want to get reelected, or we need to wrap things up. Yeah, just go ahead and cut rates and you have to do it. Right. Would that be a better system? I think that’s the question. You have to ask yourself

Eric Chemi 18:52
From the same people that put his trillions of dollars into debt and deficit, I don’t think we want them also in charge of the Fed, it probably wouldn’t, probably wouldn’t work out. Do you wonder, though, because of what Congress has done on the spending side, over the last many years that will never get out of this massive debt, that the deficits will continue to be a problem that we’re looking at a generation for our kids and grandkids that they can’t pay off debt, the interest will be too high. You can’t have high interest rates, because then just paying government treasuries is too expensive, and it’ll crowd out anything that government can do. Do you wonder about that long term effect?

Kathleen Hays 19:26
Well, it’s up to Congress, you know, I mean, in the next administration, who ever runs it? Will there be more of a willingness to come together and start looking at spending, you know, start looking at taxes, start looking at what you were going to do with Medicare and Social Security? I think some people are optimistic more of this could happen. Will it take some big? I don’t know markets, reaction somewhere along the line. Will it take a reaction in the dollar just a lot of other kinds Trees have very high debt to deficit ratios now. So it may not come from overseas. But that would be another question. It’s one thing we know, or I’d say one thing that people people consider as an issue right now is the fact that for the Fed right now for inflation in the economy, is that there was so much money that was put in programs $5 trillion worth, right. And a lot the infrastructure programs, for example, a lot of that money is still going into the economy, right. And the infrastructure project doesn’t start in a day or a month, or sometimes you may, even in a year, but as that money goes into the economy, and I’ll recommend a couple of people who have been very good on this, and one is Rob, Rob Kaplan, former president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, and also Mickey Levy, who is long known, he’s a visiting scholar at the Hoover Institution, he’s had many positions as well, and he’s been on any, that’s part of his background for Mickey is fiscal policy as well, as well as monetary policy. And they have both stressed that that’s one of the reasons people Oh, well, what is the price economy so resilient, the Fed has all these rate hikes, and it’s still growing well, but that is one of the things is going and Rob, for example, who who still has a lot of contacts in that, that broader Texas area says he knows, he talks to lots of municipalities and and companies where that those those projects are still playing out the money goes into the economy, they hire workers, then, hey, you got a little Bodega or a deli or something. But now all of a sudden, there’s a bunch of people who need to buy their lunch, right? So these are the kinds of things in some parts, or maybe many parts of the country are still feeding through. Is that bad or good? I’d say Bucky plating, what’s good, it’s building up infrastructure, and people are getting jobs and making more money. Yes. But if you think about inflation, and what it’s going to take, if you really want to get it down, then that’s one, one part of the the policy equation that you maybe have to consider a bit more than some people have.

Eric Chemi 22:05
The dichotomy between what people think like you said, Some people, if you go to different parts of the country, they think it’s good, they think it’s bad, there seems to be a big impact on on the media, in terms of what you’re reading, what you’re you’re watching, if it’s social media, the newspaper and you having been, you know, an expert in economics and immediate member of economics, do you find there’s a big disconnect between what normal people experience versus what they’re reading? What is it that regular people may or may or may not understand about what’s happening behind the scenes with policymaking? And how would that fundamentally affects them?

Kathleen Hays 22:42
One thing they need to know is that the within the Federal Reserve, they collect lots and lots of data, they run it for in all kinds of different ways. I also think that they, especially as I know, what the note the regional bank, fed banks were led by their presidents that they are very much in contact with. They’re like the Beige Book, it’s kind of like the biggest thing in the world that comes out about what three weeks before a Fed meeting. And each in each district, they talk to businesses, they talk to academics, they talk to all kinds of people and get a sense, what’s the latest? The you know, are you hiring more? Are you laying off? Our prices seem to be rising? Does that do you getting some sense that you’re you’re hearing reports from your retail businesses in your district that things are slowing down? So they do try to stay very close to that? They, I think they they do have models, but I get I think this is a combination of art and science. And speaking of models, one of the most simple one is the Taylor rule. Terrell’s really basic, John Taylor, who is a longtime Stanford economist, and was Undersecretary for the Treasury was actually under consideration potentially to be one of the heads of a fed the head of the Fed at one point or another. And this Taylor rule that he developed, I think early 90s is when it’s first started was looking at inflation and unemployment, basically growth and inflation, and then saying, you got it got it, you can make the equations fancy or simpler. But you end up with something that says, Okay, this gives you an idea of where the federal funds rate should be, relative to where inflation is and where growth is. And when I interviewed John a couple weeks ago, he Professor Taylor, maybe I should say, he said, Well, right now the Taylor rule suggests, given where inflation is given how strong growth is that the funds rate is in about the right place. But it’s not a predictive thing about where it’s going. It’s just where it is and the idea. So as inflation comes down, and he expects it will, then the funds rate should come down to I think he figured it probably could bottom around 4% where it is from, you know, five and a quarter to five and a half. That’s a Taylor rule. So if that’s a really simple rule, and when I started covering the Fed i That’s how I understood it. If the economy starts heating up, and it’s growing, that’s great. And if you see prices start to rise and pressures on inflation, then you think about maybe, should we start snugging? Up? You know, that’s when and if the economy is chugging along, and then something’s slowing it down, you Oh, maybe we should start thinking about cutting rates. It’s a very simplistic way to do it. But it’s I think it’s kind of the heart and soul of what is going on. And I think for, you know, regular people, anytime they see the anything that raises interest rates, or slows the economy down, that’s a big deal. And in fact, I just saw yesterday that Larry Summers in three of the economy economist at the National Bureau of Economic Research has done a really interesting paper where they’re talking about complex consumer sentiment, or not stronger. Why is it so weak still, even though we’ve got growth and low unemployment, and they’re looking at cost of borrowing, as something that hurts sentiment, and they have charts and everything, I haven’t read that I mostly just read a little synopsis that suggests that’s another reason why people don’t feel so good right? Now, they don’t like it when it cost them more to, you know, put put something on their credit card, you know, buy a house, whatever. And so, it I just think it’s difficult. I mean, I’m gonna give a kind analogy for the Fed, let’s say you’re a doctor, and they’ve got some kind of condition. And this is how you’re going to treat them? Well, they know why they’re doing it. And they’re know what they’re doing. You may not they can try to explain to you may not get it in the same way. And maybe that’s a little bit the way it is with Fed policy, I think the Fed is trying very hard to communicate clearly. But I think, you know, people have a lot more on their minds than what the Federal Reserve is doing. Although, not me. I mean, seriously.

Eric Chemi 26:41
The the cost of art one is an interesting one, right? Because it’s, it’s, I don’t want this to be high, because that hurts my sentiment. But the cost of borrowing being low usually is in line with low policy, which is usually going to match up with, oh, that we have all this inflation. And then people don’t want inflation either. Right? So so it’s, it’s hard because you want both, you don’t want the inflation and you don’t want the high cost of borrowing?

Kathleen Hays 27:05
Well, you know, I think that’s one of the reasons why it’s so important that inflation get out of control. And that’s why it’s important to be pre emptive. And one of the things that Fed did may be nerdy, is they passed a new framework, and it came into place, it started in April of 2020. Now, that’s just when all this pandemic was starting, because they’ve had a long time getting their, their, their the inflation number up to target and staying there, just 2%. That’s not that much, right. So they decided to pull back, one of the things that new framework said was that, that inflation would have to be above 2%. And Rising before they would start raising rates. Okay. Looking back, that was probably the wrong time to say we don’t have to be quite so preemptive. And they may have seen it a little bit differently, but they come out of 10 years of below target inflation, etc. And they also wanted to make sure the, that the labor market wasn’t just at full employment, it was maximum inclusive employment, that’s a taller measure, that’s a bigger measure, that’s going to be looked at starting towards the autumn of this year, I think when the Federal Reserve is going to take another look as another look at this, they did this kind of big, looking at their framework. And that’s what it culminated in, they’re going to start that again, that is a little bit nerdy, but that’s I think, too, it’s like so many things in life. Sometimes it helps if you get out if you don’t wait too long to start making a change. And it could be in a relationship. It could be, you know, with so many things, losing weight, gaining weight. And it’s it’s just another one of these things that is not always it’s not, you don’t always know exactly what the right answer is. And I would say myself, if I were a central banker, I would err on the side of being more preemptive, because I was always say, you can start raising rates. And if you’re having a strong impact, maybe a little too much. It’s so easy, just to slash rates, right, you can just, you know, slash and write down. And I think that’s something that maybe people are appreciating a bit more including at the Fed, you know, if they’ve been more preemptive, they may have even read some things wrong and 2021 going well into 2022. And that that’s what helped inflation go so far to control but the people who feel they’ve had almost a victory, so we’ll look at how much it came down. It was Yeah, we had went through a tough time with the pandemic create a lot of lot of things that people hadn’t expected that were hard to gauge. We did our best and now we figure we’re almost back on track, but we’re not ready to cut rates yet.

Eric Chemi 29:30
You’re right, it’s easier to slow down if you get out ahead than it is to catch up if you’re falling behind. You mentioned Professor Taylor or John as you call them originally. You know a lot of these people on a first name basis are you are you ever calling anyone doctor this or professor that was it typically always there first name?

Kathleen Hays 29:49
It kind of depends on how well I know them. It kind of depends. If it’s an interview, I might very well start with you know, President A Bostick, President barchan. President daily and then just Well, Mary, you know, well, Raphael, because a lot of these people are there. I mean, they’re probably other they’re, they’re down to earth people, they’re real people. So I don’t think they’re, you know waiting to be is you obviously want to show someone in an important position that respect, but they are there, you know, they’re all very approachable people, they’re all real people there. I just want reasons why I enjoy covering the Federal Reserve and central banks, I find them to be, I find them to be I like I just like to I’d like to I like a lot of people are involved in it. And I I think it’s for me, it’s been rare to find somebody who was just, there’s some people are arrogant or whatever. But I think most of them are pretty cool.

Eric Chemi 30:49
What are you doing with central bank Central? That’s your new, your new thing. You’re the editor in chief of that. You’re talking about that? What are we what are we? What are we expected to see from from that space from?

Kathleen Hays 31:01
Well, we’re going to start with lots of interviews with all kinds of people, people, and my most I say most of my work so far has been, you know, keeping my Federal Reserve coverage going. And I’m actually one of the things I want to do. You know, let’s do when you’re doing broadcast media, you have to be very careful of eyeballs, right, then who is going to care? What do they want? I’m going to for me, I’m going to do a lot. And one of the things I’m going to do is stuff that isn’t necessarily just the sexiest three minute interview I want to do talk more about, well, I’m you know, someone writes a paper on consumer sentiment, in cost of borrowing, call up or snap, or how’s that work? You know, and we’ll just see what kind of audience that gets. I think there are people who want to get more information, and they like to hear things in a conversation. I don’t know about you, I love to read, I can sit down and read all kinds of things. But different you go to an event and there’s a panel or something with smart people or someone’s being in and you’ll you can learn a lot just by listening. And lots of times I absorb information better. I think we’re in a different way from just reading, right? When I listen to someone that makes impression, I’m also going to make sure I maintain my coverage of foreign central banks, obviously, the two other big ones are the Bank of Japan. And for several years, I went to Japan about four times a year to cover the the BOJ meetings, ECB, European Central Bank, and then I have other people that I know and in some of the emerging markets, so I’m gonna stay on top of all that. But one more thing, financial stability, and this whole thing, look, look SVB, March of 2023, will that hit like a ton of bricks, and I think that most of us are many of us anyway. But certainly this is banking, and financial stability is a much more complicated area to dig into, I think then looking at the economy there. So that’s another thing, I want to make sure that over time with this central bank Central, I can include more and more of that because I do and I want I just think there’s a lot of really interesting people out there that nobody hears, and that doesn’t necessarily see. And so that’s where I’m going. And that’s the beginning. And you know, sky’s the limit.

Eric Chemi 33:12
That’s amazing. We look forward to see how you grow and develop that obviously from the base that you have right now to some of these other topics that you’ll be you’ll diving deeper into going forward central bank Central, Kellyanne, thank you so much for the time today and then sharing your your wisdom and your perspective on what you’re seeing right now.

Kathleen Hays 33:31
Well, I hope it’s wise. I hope it provides perspective. Because, again, this is another reason why like conversations and that’s why I think that people who could avail themselves there’s we have so much information. We have a lot of people doing these kinds of things now so we have a lot of places to go and learn and get more. So I’d say hats off to all of us. It’s an exciting time to be doing what we’re doing.

Eric Chemi 33:55
Thanks again to my guest Kathleen Hays for joining me here on Wealthion. For more information on this episode, go to the website, Wealthion.com and get all the latest information and all of our past episodes as well. And if you liked this episode, please like share, subscribe, comment forward, let everyone know that’s how we get this content out to as many people as possible so they can learn as well. Thanks so much for watching. We’ll see you next time.