The Fed’s juggling act
3/19/202619 min
The war has caused a spike in oil prices, which will pass costs through the economy. But if the economy is slowing, will there be enough inflation to send interest rates back up again? Today on the show, Katie Martin and Rob Armstrong dissect Federal Reserve chair Jay Powell’s Wednesday comments about the conflicting signals in the economy. Also they go long clean air and long March Madness.
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First 90 secondsKatie Martin· Host0:00
[on hold jingle] Pushkin. You like central banks? Everyone likes central banks. Markets are obsessed with central banks, and in the past couple of days, we've had a bunch of them setting rates and telling the world what they think. On Wednesday, we had the Mack Daddy, the US Federal Reserve, and we'll get onto that in a sec. But after that, Super Thursday, boys and girls, get on board. Rates decisions from Japan, Switzerland, Sweden, the Eurozone, UK. Every now and then the schedules just sort of line up, and you have a real day of it. This is one of those times. So what is the combined wisdom of the finest minds in finance? I'm gonna summarize here and say it's we don't know what's going on. [laughs] Iran is bad. [laughs] Iran is bad, higher energy prices are bad, and we have no clue how much worse it's gonna get. Fun times. Today on the show, are interest rates gonna hold steady or even head higher to tackle inflation, or are they heading down to deal with a recession? This is Unhedged, the markets and finance podcast from the Financial Times, and Pushkin. I'm Katie Martin, a markets columnist here at FT HQ in lovely, sunny London, joined down the line from New York City by that guy, Robert Armstrong of the Unhedged newsletter. Um, Rob, kind of