Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Does the Economy Suck Enough for the Fed to Cut Rates? 3-7-25
Fri, 07 Mar 2025
In this episode, Scott Becker breaks down the current economic landscape, where job growth is slowing, but not enough to prompt the Federal Reserve to cut interest rates.
Chapter 1: What is the current state of the economy?
This is Scott Becker with the Becker Private Equity and Business Podcast. Today's discussion, and bear with me on this, is the economy sucks, but does it suck enough for Chairman Powell to lower rates? So this is the sort of very sort of Goldilocks situation that we're in. New jobs created this past month were less than expected, about 151,000 to 160,000,
Chapter 2: Are job growth rates meeting expectations?
new new unemployment claims were also lower than expected they expected about 236 we only got 221 000. so what you've got is a slightly softening jobs market and and that's enough to cause fears of recession
Chapter 3: What are the implications of unemployment claims?
But not quite a slow enough job market and not quite enough slow enough inflation and all kinds of concerns around inflation riding around tariffs that we don't know what Fed Chairman Powell and the Fed will do on rates. So what you've got consequently is a slowing market, slowing job market, pretty stable inflation.
Chapter 4: Is inflation stable despite the job market changes?
What people think of as quote unquote stagflation, stagnant economy and inflation. And that's leading the Fed to have to hold still and not reduce rates. And that's leading the market to take this quite negatively, as well as responding to all the tariff talk.
And so you've got the situation where things suck, but they don't suck so bad that the Fed's going to lower rates and try and boost up the availability of credit and to make credit cheaper. So that's what we're sitting on now. I hope you liked this simple analysis. I hope it's understandable to all of us. Always feel free to text Scott Becker with ideas for podcasts, ideas for talks, 773-766-5322.
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