GOODBYE POWELL: Final Fed FOMC Presser & Rate Decision!

All right. All right. Here we go. It is another Federal Reserve rate decision and press conference. The difference this time is it is Jerome Powell's last. Now, this is uh quite bittersweet. Jerome Powell has been covered on this channel for about 8 years. Uh we've been covering him uh certainly since at least 2018, maybe even longer than that, which is crazy because welcome to 2026. Means it's been 8 years of talking about J Pow on this channel. And honestly, it's I don't know. It's kind of sad. You know, Papa Pow is going away. You know, don't fight the Fed. You know, all the fun stuff over the past years. uh you know, inflation, transitory, you know, all the entertainment. It's incredible. But it uh it really ends uh today. Now, Powell's term doesn't end today. Powell's uh term as governor ends on the 15th of next month. That's May. And uh at the uh beginning of 2028, January 31st, 2028, Jerome Powell uh will be required to leave as a um Fed board member, you know, one of the board of governors there. Uh Dr. Pal may leave now as is typically tradition uh after May 15th. Of course, I think he'll probably just end up getting sued again by Trump. And if he waits until January 31st, 2028, maybe uh Trump will have forgotten about him. So, we'll see. It's uh it's going to be really interesting. And uh it's the last time. So, you know, I'm actually going to put on our bingo board. Uh this is I think he's going to get a standing ovation today. So, we think he's going to be on time. We expect that. Hopefully, Wars can keep that up. We'll see. Uh but I'm actually going to mark standing ovation here. Uh so, we'll say um let's get the pencil here. There we go. Standing uh ovation. Ovation for uh Powell. Uh like at the end probably, right? Standing ovation for Powell. He's on time. Obviously, uh this is going to be a hard column to get. So, we'll throw an easy one in here. We'll throw in the purple tie. Uh you know, I do think we'll probably hear some form of a reference of uh you know, high for longer. Uh high for longer uh or some sort of a hold for longer. I think that overall he is going to cheer the ADP and the job numbers. sheer job numbers uh job numbers I think he'll uh say that the economy is doing better than expected economy uh better than expected and that's going to justify uh you know rate stabilizing right uh better than expected you know obviously we have uh an oil shock which is a apply uh driven shock uh oil uh/supply shock. So, uh you know, that'll kind of get our bingo board started here. We'll have a little bit uh extra work to do. Yeah, you know, we could throw in a good afternoon. And honestly, it might be the last good afternoon we get, you know. Good afternoon. Yeah, good afternoon. Uh, I do think he'll likely say he has not made the decision yet on whether he'll stay. Uh, will you stay? Um, no decision yet. Uh, yet. This is not the place. Uh, the place. Okay. Uh so he'll share the job numbers. I think we'll see some of the if you've been we talked about this in the uh the alpha report this morning. Uh the capital good orders non-defense xair phenomenal. I mean like blew expectations out of the water. Uh obviously a lot of this is artificial intelligence related spending but uh you know that's already been factored in to expectations. So, you know, there are still components of this economy that are booming. And you know, this week has obviously been a little volatile. We went in Monday morning before the market opened up. We said in the course member live streams, this is not the week for calls. And you know, the market's been I actually even said, I'm leaning bearish this week. And I mean, some of the numbers, you know, a

little rough right now. We actually have a um a we created this probably eight months ago. uh back when Robin Hood was like 14%. We did a fundamental analysis on Robin Hood and we're like I'm not touching this stock until it is $69 or below. We're at 70. Uh so we're almost there. It's actually really incredible uh that you know it came down this far because that's where I thought was a more fair price for the stock. So it's really incredible. Uh but uh you know, same thing with even something like an NPC. You know, they've been going into this power purchase agreement, low margin business. I'm like, this is ridiculous. You can't go anywhere near this thing, as has been the case for a while. Um but um let's keep going with the uh the Powell sheet here. Uh in honor obviously of Powell's last day, we're doing a very brief code for him. Goodbye Powell at meetke. com. So if you want to join us in that membership, meet Kevin. com. But let's focus on this. So we got goodbye. Good afternoon. You know, I actually have an old one here which is kind of cool. Look at this. I could kind of cheat. Fit flexible inflation targeting. You know, they stopped referencing that. They referenced that for a while. Low, higher, low fire. You know, we might hear that banking sounded resilient, right? This is an old one. This is from October. Evolving outlook. There's no evolving outlook anymore. You know, some of these are kind of old. Uh 50 BP cuts not necessary at this time. We didn't get any 50 BP cuts anyway. So, that was somewhat in alignment. Uh I do think low higher low fire is sort of an easy win here we could write down. So let's do it. Low uh higher low fire. But uh bonus or uh but uh labor market uh showing signs of uh rebounding after stabilizing, right? So um rebounding is even better than stabilizing. You want that. That is bullish, right? So, uh we got labor market, we got the oil supply shock obviously is going to get a mention on time. Good afternoon. Um you know, I do think we'll see the two-sided risk. Twosided risk. You know, I do think he hawks more than expected. And overall, it's actually bullish for the economy. Bullish uh economy. And I think he'll also cheer uh handing uh a strong economy economy to uh Worsh, you know. So, I think he'll sort of like declare victory on that a little bit, right? Uh question on the lawsuit. Yeah, he'll get asked and he'll ignore Pentagon to send one of its aircraft carriers home from the Middle East. Oh, wow. Uh okay. So, let's mark how are we going to put that? Uh I'll put um punts question on uh lawsuit. That's pretty much expected. I also think he's going to talk up consensus about the rate cut, right? Uh so uh talk up consensus on uh rate rates I'll call it rates staying stable rates uh staying Uh there we go. Stable. Okay. So, because he wants to set up consensus before WSH gets in is my anticipation. Uh yeah, transit. I don't know that he'll use the transitory over time. Uh but um the I certainly think he'll refer to longer inflation shocks, longerl lasting inflation shocks. Uh I think it's pretty obvious that he's going to say the job isn't done. something like um job isn't done yet on inflation. There we go. Uh let's see here. H

his last words. F everyone. Does he call it a soft landing? Yeah. I mean, um I think we're kind of beyond the land part and it's more of the takeoff part, right? Um he might he might, you know, I'll write it down. Uh so some reference to having achieved to achieving soft landing. Yeah, it's very interesting, you know, just because the economy has really been through the ringer. You know, it's like there have been a lot of shocks and stresses for the economy. Uh and uh you it's a lot for the economy to go through. I think certainly uh one of the reasons we went through it as well as we did is you know the amount of money that people had been able to build up postco obviously artificial intelligence helps as well but the economy went through the reamer you know the ringer the reamer had like a colonoscopy you know it's like it's almost like getting a PCAOB audit you all might know like very few companies actually get PCAOB level audits they're very expensive they're very rigorous uh house hacks going through or reinvest is going through its PCAOB audit right now dude it finishes tomorrow it is a lot I mean it's really good you know it's like uh it's like somebody just checks and questions everything and it's great because you know the better the more you do them the better you are at just like having things prepped for them because you kind of anticipate what they're going to ask uh and our books are like really good so it's nice to affir confirm that what we're doing is great at house hack and reinvest but it's a lot of work. Uh and so I understand why a lot of companies don't go through it but I mean that was all reference to this building on like the economyy's really been has gone through this sort of like colonoscopy and it's you know it's done really well. It's come out you know it's gotten a lot of biopsies but doesn't seem to have any big problems right now which is great. Somebody writes Jerome Powell statue on the lawn. You know, we did say that. We did say we need a Jerome Powell statue if uh if he sticks the soft landing. And uh Yeah. Yeah. You're right. We're going to have to Does anybody know somebody who can make a statue? If you can make a stone statue, please email staffmeke. com. Uh you know, I need like a three foot tall mini. That's not really mini. is pretty big, but 3 ft. That'd be about right. We got to follow the problem. I just need somebody to make it. I'll put it right next to my giant gong. That's with a G in case that didn't come through clearly. You know, one of the bong. Anyway, uh all right. So, I you know, my big call today is I think he deserves a standing ovation. We'll see. But, uh you know, reference to achieving soft landing. I'll I'll see that. Somebody says I can make a bronze one. Bro, I'd take a bronze one. Email us because I'll, you know, I'm gonna hose that thing so much it's going to turn green like the Statue of Liberty. I need him holding a book. No, I don't know. What should he hold? Should he hold anything? No, he doesn't need to be holding anything. He's just got to be like a smug face with his arms crossed. That's all you really need. Victory. But anyway, uh um or him with the construction hat on. Oh, that'd be hilarious because uh you know it's sort of like standing up to Trump. All right, we got to finish this board. Uh come on, baby. Uh reference shaving off landing. Good afternoon. Higher for longer. Uh I'm going to say uh no discussion of cuts. No talk of cuts. Uh, I think I wouldn't be surprised if even Myin goes for a hold. Even Myin uh might uh go for hold. Who knows? But it's possible. Uh let's say he does. holds. Okay. Then uh no talk cuts. Good afternoon. Uh it's, you know, wait and see. Meeting by meeting. So we'll go meeting by meeting uh by meeting data dependent. And then I got one more meeting by meeting uh data dependent. And how about uh how about something like um uh let's see let's see let's see here.

Somebody's like, "The Fed building is taxpayer dollars. " The ballroom is like, "Bro, come on. Everybody knows that the ballroom is just like tariff extortion, you know. Hey, I'll give you a better deal on the on your tariffs and I'll give you some exemptions. Nvidia, Jensen, I'll let you sell some of your chips to China. I'll let you sell to China, but you know, I'm going to need a couple hundred mil for my ballroom. " You know, it's all [ __ ] Oh, it's not taxpayer money. Come on, man. You know how much rigging is going up in there? And I mean, they all do it, but let's just say the level of rigage has been a little elevated lately. Okay, I think we can all agree on that one. Meeting by meeting. Come on, baby. I need one more. We got about a minute to figure this out. Uh, hold meeting. you know, the honor the he'll say something like honor the like he hopes that the future Fed chair honor will continue to honor the independence of the Fed. There independence of Fed. There we go. All right, cool. So, we got our bingo board ready. Let's uh you know, feel free to uh to take a little snappy doodle snapshot over here. Coupon code is goodbye Powell at meetcaven. com and househack. com. Keep in mind house hacks valuation AI is still on schedule for a June release. That's at the end of the Q2 time frame that we forecast. Uh that's still looking uh like it's on schedule. Got a lot of cool things coming out to the Meet Kevin Heaven app here as well soon, which we're very excited about. We've been doing a lot of updates lately and uh yeah, let's get hooked too. We're about to get He's JPAL's about to hawk to us. Yeah, it's staffmekke. com. If you want to make either a bronze or stone bust, email staff meetke Kevin. com. All right, here we go. Uh, okay. I got some headlines already while we wait for them to show up. So, we have uh policy statement draws most number of dissenting votes. What? 8 to four. Myron descented for a quarter point cut and then there was talk about Oh. Oh, right. Cuz we're not getting Powell now. We're just getting the statement now. Duh. Powell's in 30 minutes. Uh, so vote in favor of 8 to 4. That's a crazy split. Fed is considering the extent and timing of additional adjustments uh to Fed rates. The committee will carefully assess incoming data. Okay. The market's not really moving so far off the statement uh like at all. These are the cues right here. Job gains have remained low on average. Unemployment little changed. Indicators suggest economic activity has been expanding at a solid pace. Interest rates are unchanged with no signal for when rates may change with a high level of uncertainty due to the Middle East. The unemployment rate little change characterizes inflation as elevated versus somewhat elevated in the previous statement. So we've moved to elevated versus somewhat elevated character. We've got the committee is attentive to both sides of the dual mandate. That's that dualsided risk. Developments in the Middle East are contributing to high level of uncertainty. Characterizes inflation. We saw that attentive to risk of dual side. Yes. Uh we've got okay vote in favor of policy was 84 with Myron dissenting in favor of a quarter point cut. Okay so that he's still going for the cut but a hammock Qashqari and Logan dissented against the inclusion of the easing bias in the statement. Okay, so that's really interesting. So basically there are members of the Fed who voted against Powell here to argue that we should actually get rid of any indication that we are even open to cutting rates in the future. Uh so let's write that down. That's uh that's somewhat interesting and then we can kind of uh understand this a little bit better uh together. So, the Fed's statement, and we'll jot this down together. So, we've got Hammock, uh, Cashari, and Logan, uh, voted no. Cash Kari voted no because they wanted to remove easing bias language from statement. Basically, they're trying to send a little warning sign. uh basically uh warning that we may not uh cut rates anytime soon. The committee uh is happy where they are. Uh and uh let's see here. What else would you get? It also somewhat sets up for a harder time for Worsh, right? Sets up a

harder time for war. war um biases uh towards rate cuts. If already committee members are freaking, uh wanting to remove any hints of cuts, uh they're preserving their optionality to go up in rates due to of course uh as they say, Middle East uncertainty. Okay. They do in the statement mention that uh job gains have remained low. So this is a lack of reference lack of uh mention in statement uh on the ADP reports. You know obviously rates unchanged that was expected. Uh, myin wanted a 25 want a 25 BP cut and uh let's see committee carefully assess incoming data and the balance of risks. A lot of talk for rate cuts uh future rate cuts based on a balance of risk risks. Yeah, we've already known that uh most number of dissenting votes. This is four descents. So 8 to4 vote. Most descents since October 1992. That's when Kevin was born. Uh well Jan 92 but close enough. I think that's when hurricane What was the hurricane? I think that was hurricane Andrew. Oh that may have been September. Hurricane Andrew. Oh, was it the year before? No. August 92. August. That makes sense. More in hurricane season. Okay. Interesting. So then we've got inflation elevated. Oh. From somewhat elevated, right? And then they moved uh moved uh job gains have remained low. Unemployment rates stable. moved inflation from somewhat elevated to elevated. Now that's actually important. So this is uh this is a the these statements together here uh important because Fed will act on whichever mandate is closer from their goal. Okay, they're telling you employment is stable and inflation is now further from the goal, worse than before. This implies or sets up, you know, rate hikes. Um, and then, uh, I should put a note just at the quick top over here. Uh, goodbye Powell is the coupon code at meet kevin. com and uh, househack. com expiring tomorrow just in honor of Powell. Oh, I can't wait till we get to release some of these new things that are coming out for some uh, for the course members. We already have such cool things. Uh, but then we'll be raising the price again quite a bit because when this stuff comes out, it's going to be incredible. Okay. So, yeah, let's send that through. Let's go uh let's listen into CNBC for a moment. See if they have anything fun for us. Opposite direction. I know. Okay. Let's go back. This is We didn't get a rate cut. Nobody expected a rate cut. Okay, Francis, but I think I'm one of them. And if I frame this incorrectly, please correct me. I'll let you know. I I'm sure you will, even your nice Canadian way, which is we have three members of the Fed board who dissented not on rates, right, but dissented because they indicated they don't want to cut later. It felt like a direct shot across the bow of an incoming Kevin Worsh administration. That's exactly what I was saying. It's basically this setup where you're like, "Hey, we're going to start uh planting the seeds for being anti-war internally. " Internally, it's coming through. This is a committee that is marking to market the view, the language with where the data is. The data is telling you the labor market is extraordinarily tight. The data is telling you inflation is running near 3% and heading in the wrong direction. soft and the way you argue inflation, right? The just understanding this, the way you argue this is you call it transitory. That's all you could do. The only way you can mirn a rate cut or wash is if

you argue the oil shock is short-term uh transitory. The problem is the more you call problems uh transitory, the more you risk deankering expectations. And then welcome to the 1970s, right? So here's the red line. Uh job gains have remained low on average, right? Because we've seen some highs and lows on some of the numbers. Inflation is elevated, right? They got rid of the remains somewhat high level of uncertainty whereas before they just had uncertain and that's it. Yeah, there it is. Maintaining the target funds rate, federal funds rate but did not the support the inclusion of an easing bias in the statement. Uh that would be this right here. In considering the extent and timing of additional adjustments, uh, we'll carefully assess the incoming data. Uh, I mean, I guess that's why they call it a bias because the implication there is like, hey, when are you guys going to do future rate cuts? Oh, well, it depends on the data. Okay, I think this vote might have been even more in favor of dissense or even that they would have taken out the easing bias if this was not Powell's last meeting. I think Powell wanted a hand to war the status quo and didn't want to make a big change of where the Fed had been over the past several months just before he left. But I think that there's maybe more than three people and I've been following this torsion and I know you do probably better than I do. Each word that's come out and a lot of those words have been about we're not comfortable with this idea. We want to go to more. Somebody says uh they're shorting AMD. You know, AMD has been one of the stocks that we've been shouting out in the uh the course membership because we've been talking since the beginning of April about how uh AMD is actually very undervalued and how there's a uh a CPU boom happening that people aren't paying attention to. Uh and so we've been talking about this for quite a while. And so it doesn't surprise me that it's rocketed like this. But if you are shorting AMD, you do want to watch this 34226 line. I personally don't have the balls to do that. I I I'm not going to make bets against hardware right now. Uh I do think the better bet in the long term, like over the next 10 years, I' I'd rather take my money that I would spend on shorts because I don't know that I can call that timing to that perfectly. I'd rather invest it into 10-year stocks, you know, stocks where I'm like, "Oh, okay. Well, there are some good deals on sales right now, and I want to go buy those. " Like, you know, Robin Hood's almost at my $69 target. We don't own it in the Meet Kevin membership. We have 13 stocks that we're buying for the next 10 years. And you know, I want you to be a part of it, but you know, my hope is that in 10 years, we look back and we say, "Wow, out of those 13 stocks, you know, 12 of them were killers, like amazing winners. " You know, I mean, I don't think I'm going to have a 100% batting average, and I don't think anybody does, but um but uh yeah, I'm very excited. Uh obviously, no guarantees, but I'm pretty excited. And so I actually like some of these discounts I'm seeing in fintech. You know, SoFi is another one. Uh but there's also more competition coming up in banking. You know, one of my favorite um banks, Mercury, they uh they just uh got preliminary approval for their banking license. Uh so there's a lot of competition in this space for customers. You know, SoFi just reported and they're down 14%. I don't own any SoFi either. Uh but then at the same time you also had a Visa report and V dude Visa if you want to look at like an income statement and just have your draw drop in terms of how much freaking money Visa makes. It's insane. They literally make a Tesla worth of free cash flow every month. So the annual free cash flow that Tesla produces Visa generates every month. And Visa is like onethird the market cap of Tesla. It's crazy. It's Visa is actually not that expensive right now. You know, it's trading for like what was it? A 1. 6 peg here. I'll just pull it up. I'll show you. Uh Stonss, we have them at uh I wrote it down this morning. Where was it? 1. 8. Yeah. 1. 8 peg. and you know their marketing went up a little bit because of the Olympics and people have like stable coin fears because of uh you know transact but honestly they're just going to make money with stable coins. That's my take. It's really incredible. So um

Alex here says I'm shorting at 335. Definitely short-term definitely undervalued. Oh. Oh, you're making a day trade. Oh, okay. Yeah, yeah. Oh, so you're just using it as a proxy for Powell. Oh, well that's reasonable. Uh it's not just Powell, but also mega cap earnings. You have to be careful. You know, if you're going to hold it through the day, you got a lot of earnings coming up at the bell. So, earnings at the bell are uh you know, they're going to send a huge signal for uh mega cap spending. You know, the whole open AI hit piece yesterday in the Wall Street Journal I thought was a little overblown. Uh chat's gotten pretty good. They've caught up again to like Gemini and others. And uh this is just sort of part of the I do think they spend like drunken sailors but uh I do think there's a lot of utility to these you know all of them anthropic Gemini chat uh perplexity actually is one of the they're not the first with this but they have a really cool feature called the model council and you could like enable three different bots and then like find consensus and differences between them. It does it all for you. Um, not the most detailed, but it's pretty cool. Uh, so there's some pretty impressive stuff going on. Uh, so, okay, good, good. Uh, let's see here. What else? U, Tesla, you know, I honestly do believe that Tesla, and this is not to be bearish Tesla, it just it's just a I can't call it a fact. It's just a strong opinion. That's a very strong opinion that it's going to be going back into the 200s, unfortunately. Uh, I think Elon's going to kind of keep sandbagging this one, uh, intentionally so he can acquire it. Uh, so I think it's all part of the greater plan, uh, if you will, which is, uh, unfortunate, but what we'll see. Even Palanteer's come down. You know, a lot of the software plays have really come down lately. I think Michael Bur's been watching too many meek Kevin member live streams and, you know, apparently now Michael Bur is like getting into Microsoft and software plays. And I'm like, dude, how many of my live streams have you been watching? Uh, six Iranian crew members of Iranian flag container ship uh, freed after seizure. 22 Iranians are still being held. Uh, I've got, you know, SanDisk as like the greatest hardware meme play. I mean, it's $158 billion market cap after like 10xing, right? It's gone from like 15 to 158. It's actually been pretty damn incredible. Uh, scary because, you know, this is going to be one of those heavy U-turns. It's a very cyclical play, but boy, uh, it's incredible. You know, Bloom had another rocket of, uh, earnings, pretty impressive as well. Also quite overvalued. Hardware is just a there are a lot of hardware plays that are quite overvalued, but it's still pretty impressive how the market's trading it. Uh, so we shall see. You know, even Dell breaking 200. Pretty impressive. Uh, Super Micro is the one getting left behind, but uh, but anyway, we've got Powell in about 14 minutes. We've got our bingo board ready already. We actually got it ready pretty early here. So, we got reference to achieving the soft landing. No talk of cuts. You know, I realize we, you know, we could put something else here. I don't know. It's probably cheating, but we usually don't do our bingo board until like right before Powell comes out. So, let's just kill the little myin piece right there. And we'll have like one little opening there. Um, so, you know, I put talk about consensus about rates staying stable on there. I think that'll still occur. Uh even though we didn't have a consensus vote. Uh so we'll be able to fill something in there. No, I don't know when Tesla uh would go fall to 200. Uh I think a lot of that sort of just depends on uh you know the next two or three earnings. So, no, it's not something uh to short that I'm going to short, but I I do think it's unfortunately like the trajectory is obvious to where I don't want to buy it. Uh it's also a little pricey right now. A little It's like a five peg. Donald Trump, Iran has small percentage of missile making facilities because we obliterated them. Right. We shall see. You know, another proxy for SpaceX stock has kind of uh settled down a little bit. See this here? This is SATS Echoar. They've got a good uh SpaceX exposure and the whole Elon stock comp plan to get, you know, a million people on Mars and a $7 trillion valuation for SpaceX. In my opinion, that's just part of the IPO hype because he's trying to get people to go, "Oh, well, if it IPOs at$2 billion dollars and Musk thinks it's going to go to seven, that's a three and a half bagger. I'm going to three and a halfx my money if I buy Space X so Elon can get paid. " That's I think what he's

trying to, you know, brand. So, uh, Trump suggested a bit of a ceasefire in Ukraine. ceasefire. Interesting. Yeah. 24 hours. all have that war solved. Oh, that was just being satirical, right? Uh but anyway, uh what do you think happens with Spirit Airlines tomorrow? I don't know. You know, they've um it's no surprise that they entered bankruptcy proceedings. This back when we were doing fundamental analysis, but on Spirit, but um you know, you could see when a company is trending towards bankruptcy. It's actually one of the features that we're working on in the Meet Kevin app where we uh we flag stocks based on the level of bankruptcy risk they have. So like if you see a cheap stock that is trending towards bankruptcy, at least you're aware of that as well. Uh so that'll be a cool feature. But um yeah, you know, Trump is sort of muse taking a stake in Spirit, which is odd. uh sort of nationalizing of a money losing business, but you know, Trump doesn't want to see job loss and he wants to come in as a hero. Uh it's sort of his way of buying votes, if you will. I think uh midterms are not going to be very uh pleasant to Trump, though. We shall see. Uh okay, what else do we have? We've got now 11 minutes until Powell comes out. Donald Trump spoke with Putin in a very positive exchange that covered both Ukraine and Iran. Trump told Putin, "I would rather he assist in bringing the war in Ukraine to an end. " Adding that Iran possesses only a small fraction of his missing missile making facilities. I believe he might declare a ceasefire, possibly a small one, in the near future. So what? Putin could just unilaterally declare ceasefires probably. Um, I don't know. That sounds like Putin appeasing Trump. Oh, yeah. Maybe, you know, I saw your ceasefire. Good job. Maybe we do same. Yeah, Putin would like to be a, you know, I think Putin knows how to manipulate Trump really well. I think it's very interesting. Oh, he just wants to help. He's a good guy. He Putin's just want He just wants to help. He just wants to help, guys. You know, we're going to we're going to work out a small ceasefire. So he says, "Damn insiders, politicians making bank on oil. " Yeah. Yeah, I know. It's uh the insider trading is probably the most extreme we've ever seen it. There's always been insider trading. It just seems to be uh more extreme today than ever before. Uh yeah, Circle 91 bucks. Uh it is uh I think we are sitting right Yeah, we got a line at 87 for it. It is uh it had a little bit of a euphoria there between uh 87 and 121. I actually broke past 121 but uh yeah the integration of stable coins I think will become a big part of our financial future both uh you know you won't notice it. It'll be just built into banking and credit cards and everything. I think that's happening. been descending a lot lately about wanting to cut rates, but then three others actually trying to eliminate the bias toward easing rates down the line. Got a we swapped out our panel a bit. David Kelly, we invited you into the chamber of doom here. Jeff Kilberg joining us as well of KKM Financial on set. Jeff, um markets not moving. I think they're waiting for Jerome Powell and he didn't drop a bomb. He may still yet, but the four descents, should the market react to this? I don't think they need to react. But what this is to use a football analogy, this is a new quarterback hitting the portal. When you see a new quarterback coming in and Kevin Walsh in the old quarterback and Jerome Powell leaving, this was the rest of the players kind of letting him know, hey, we're not going to let you lead us here. So Trump hints that the war in Ukraine could conclude before the conflict with Iran. That's not good. That means Trump is getting quite bearish on Iran. That is not good. Uh, let me see what oil's doing right now. Ah, 11850. Wow. Yeah. So, that's not good. Let's go uh write that onto the uh geopol. Uh, Iran Trump hints uh war in Ukraine could conclude before war in Iran. This is bearish. uh Brent rockets to 11850. My warning signal, my warning price target is 120. Uh that's what we've had in uh course member discussions and on yesterday's video. Uh we're up, you know, quite a bit since then already.

Uh okay, that's Gio. That's crazy. That is not good. Not good at all. I think another message to him that look, you're really going to have to talk with everybody in the committee. You're going to have to find consensus. You can't just steamroll a people with with your own ideas. Somebody here says Trump has uh messed up the Iran situation so bad and embarrassed America and will likely begin losing the petro dollar over this. I definitely think there's been some embarrassment regarding this. I think the dollar still has uh quite a bit of strength, but you're right, like it push pushes us down a messy uh track. You know, it' be nice not to have to deal with this sort of nonsense. Uh so, let's see. Uh speaks of Yeah, white collar crime. No, all the inception. It is. But, you know, you have an administration that's actively instructing the DOJ and SEC to not enforce certain insider training. You know, I think they recently made an example of like some military sergeant or whatever. But notice how, you know, by no means is it any of the politicians or political folks involved up at the top. So, I feel like that was just a little bit Oh, yeah. See, we are working on it. We are persecuting insider trading. It's like, no, you're not. Maybe that's just being jaded. Be fair to him. I mean, he, you know, this is a new job. It's going to be u you know, he deserves everybody's support going into this very important job. But I think you do have to ask questions about, you know, when he was on the Fed before, he definitely was hawkish. uh and then he's now in sort of the leadup to this he's expressed almost the opposite set of views and you just wonder what are the true views or how deeply held are those particular views and what Jim almost was saying and a lot of people feel this way don't buy it but the cutting rates in September of 2024 drone pal cut rates cuz the labor market was poop and I still don't know why are you kidding me the labor market was falling off a cliff you jackass you're just going to ignore for all the data inflation. I think getting back to a normal. We also had the Japanese carry trade crisis at the same time the labor market was falling off a cliff and this CNBC clown wants to pretend that we don't know why because you weren't paying attention dumbass is we don't know what transitory is unless the boats transit out of the straight of Hormuz and to your point crude oil is at 107 and the other thing to think about in this oil issue is we went into this massive stockpile of inventory around the world. We're working through that. But while we're working through that stockpile, we're not seeing the price effects. If this goes on another month, two months, three months, four months, we've got a real problem. You're talking my world. Now, Dave, I will say this, the paper market that we show on the screen. I agree. Uh it's uh CNBC does is starting to get a little embarrassing these days. I I listen to them less and less. Like I was on uh my trip to uh on my trip to New York, which is a great trip, by the way. highly recommend take your spouse on a trip to New York and go to, you know, a Broadway show or whatever and just mess around in New York. It's kind of fun, but um yeah, thanks to real estate and uh and stock analysis for letting us do that. But um remember you can join at meetke. com, use that coupon code. But um what am I trying to say? Uh, oh yeah, I was wa I was using the Vision Pro on the flight over uh and I had Bloomberg TV up while at the same time, you know, working whatever documents I was working on, some research or whatever. And uh as much as I don't like the Doomers, feel like it's uh it's better than CNBC lately. I don't know what's changed lately. Maybe that's just a vibe I'm getting. So uh anyway, let's see what else we have here. we're not going to bail you out because you know the administration's got to figure out a solution to the problem in the Middle East. They've got to figure out a solution and if they assume that somehow the Fed is going to cut rates and that's going to fix things or something else going to happen to fix things that that's just very bad strategy. So in a way the Fed's saying you you got to deal with the problems because we're not going to bail you out here. But it's almost a reminder that we're independent. Right. Exactly. One other thing I think about Francis Donald used the term fiscal dominance and was talking about and we all know this is true. look at the deficits and look at the way that kind of the fiscal side is dominating the business cycle. Is the Fed going to push back on that, David Kelly? And would a Worsh Fed put push back on that? No, I think War to the extent that he has expressed a philosophy, it's really the Fed shouldn't. And I agree with that the Fed needs to have a small it should deal with the things it can deal with. It shouldn't try and deal with things it can't deal with. And you know, when you talk about fiscal, it's not so much fiscal, you know, the size of the deficit. It's a lot of decisions we're making in Washington. The

vision pro are they actually useful? um for very specific purposes. Uh like a plane is a great example I think where the vision pro is very useful because you do get a much larger workspace. Uh I much prefer in an office just having like two laptops or you know a couple computers or whatever. That's my preference. Uh, I actually like that a lot because I, you know, I noticed that even with newer Mac computers or even Windows computers, I could just run things better if I have multiple of them. Like right now in front of me, I have four computers and these are all Windows computers actually. And uh, actually that's not true. One of them is a Mac and then three of them are Windows computers. But it it's just been a lot easier to run video processing or video editing or you know uh news feeds or whatever on different computers so they just don't bog down the main frame you're working on. Um that is like the opposite with the Vision Pro, right? Everything's kind of squeezed into one device. Uh and there are some limitations like you could you can't stream this I think is stupid. You can't mirror to your phone and your laptop at the same time. So, like if I have my laptop mirrored to the Vision Pro and then I have a bunch of other windows open, that's great. But then I want to check my phone, I have to take the damn goggles off and that's annoying. Uh like you should be able to mirror both your laptop and your phone to the Vision Pro. I don't know, maybe there's a new update that'll fix that or something. But that was that's been my experience with uh with it. But I mean like you know outside of flying and then an extended flight at that, you know, is it really worth spending four grand on or whatever? No. I do hope Apple comes out with a foldable phone because I do wish my phone were larger. Like I wish I had a device that could fit in my pocket that could be larger than the phone but isn't as large as an iPad, right? Cuz that iPad doesn't fit in my pocket just so I could like read more easily. Not that I'm like going blind. I could see the text to my phone just fine, but I think more screen real estate would be nice, even just for like annotating and researching when I do. That's why I like the iPad, but I don't want to carry an iPad around everywhere. So, they get heavy. Yeah, the Mini's okay. Uh the Mini's The Mini is pretty good. Like, if you're going to go travel somewhere, the Mini's good. It doesn't weigh that much. You start, you put a keyboard case on an iPad Pro, it's like 4 lb. It's crazy. Then you may as well have a whole freaking Mac Pro laptop. It's crazy. Uh so yeah, iPad Mini though is good. My iPad mini screen is cracked and they're like, "Oh, it'll cost you $499 to replace it. " I'm like, "I could just buy a new mini. " And they're like, "Yeah, you want to buy a new mini? " And I'm like, "No, I'll just leave it cracked. " I because I just I use it so little that I really don't care and it doesn't really affect the performance where the crack is. So, you know, and it's not about the money. It's like the hassle of setting up yet another device. Trump on Hormuzade. It has been genius. Uh-huh. Iran just has to say he give up. Yeah. or perhaps his last ever press conference as Fed chair. Good afternoon. Yes. Uh my colleagues and I remain squarely focused on achieving our dual mandate goals of maximum employment and stable prices for the benefits benefit of the American people. The US economy has been expanding at a solid pace. While job gains have remained low, the unemployment rate has been little changed in recent months. Inflation has moved up and is elevated in part reflecting the recent increase in global energy prices. Today, the FOMC decided to leave our policy rate unchanged. We see the current stance of monetary policy as appropriate to promote progress toward our maximum employment and 2% inflation goals. Developments in the Middle East are contributing to a high level of uncertainty about the economic outlook and we will remain attentive to risks to both sides of our dual mandate. I'll have more to say about monetary policy after briefly reviewing economic developments. Recent indicators suggest that economic activity has been expanding at a solid pace. Consumer spending has been resilient and business fixed investment has continued to expand at a brisk pace. In contrast, activity in the housing sector has remained weak. In the labor market, the unemployment rate was 4. 3% in March and has changed little in recent months. Job gains have

remained low. A good part of the slowing in the pace of the job growth over the past year reflects a decline in the growth of the labor force due to lower immigration and labor force participation, though labor demand has clearly softened as well. Other indicators, including job openings, layoffs, hiring, and nominal wage growth, generally show little change in recent months. Inflation has moved up recently and is elevated relative to our 2% longer run goal. Estimates based on the consumer price index and other data indicate that total PCE prices rose 3. 5% over the 12 months ending in March, boosted by the significant rise in global oil prices that has resulted from the conflict in the Middle East. Excluding the volatile food and energy categories, core PCE prices rose 3. 2% over the 12 months ending in March. This relatively high rate largely reflects the effects of tariffs on prices in the goods sector. Near-term measures of inflation expectations have risen this year, likely because of the substantial rise in oil prices. Most measures of longerterm expectations remain consistent with our 2% inflation goal. Our monetary policy actions are guided by our dual mandate to promote maximum employment and stable prices for the American people. At today's meeting, the committee decided to maintain the target range for the federal funds rate at 3 and a half to 3 and 3/4%. The economic outlook remains highly uncertain and the conflict in the Middle East has added to this uncertainty. In the near term, higher energy prices will push up overall inflation. Beyond that, the scope and duration of potential effects on the economy remain unclear, as does the future course of the conflict itself. We will continue to monitor the risks to both sides of our dual mandate. We are well positioned to determine the extent and timing of additional adjustments to our policy rate based on the incoming data, the evolving outlook, and the balance of risks. Monetary policy is not on a preset course, and we will make our decisions on a meeting by meeting basis. There we go. This is my last press conference as chair, and I will close with a few thoughts. First, I want to congratulate Kevin Walsh on his advancement out of the Senate Banking Committee this morning. This is an important step forward and I wish him well as that process continues. The Federal Reserve exists for one fundamental purpose to foster the economic conditions in which American families and businesses can thrive. Stable prices, a strong job market, and a financial system they can depend on. Every decision we make, whether about interest rates or regulatory and supervisory matters or other issues, is made in service of that purpose. Our decisions reflect the collective judgment of the board of governors and the federal open market committee. Colleagues who demonstrate analytical rigor, principled judgment, and a genuine commitment to the public interest. Our collaborative and deliberative process has long reflected a shared commitment to finding common ground in service to our mission. This institution is resilient, capable, and staffed by professionals of extraordinary talent and exceptional dedication. It has been a privilege to serve alongside so many great public servants at the board of governors and around the Federal Reserve system. The Fed's work is only as effective as the public's understanding of it. And you, the press, are essential to keeping the public informed about we about what we do and why. The people we serve, benefit from your careful reporting. I welcomed the announcement last Friday by the US attorney for the District of Columbia that she had closed the criminal investigation. She also noted, however, that she would not hesitate to restart the investigation. Uh-oh. Over the weekend, the Department of Justice provided assurances that they will not reopen the investigation unless there's a criminal referral from the Fed's inspector general. And absent such a referral, if they do appeal the recent court decision, they would not seek, as part of that appeal, to restart the investigation or send new subpoenas. I said that I will not leave the board until this investigation is well and truly over with transparency and finality, and I stand by that. I'm encouraged by recent developments, and I'm watching the remaining steps in this process carefully. My decisions on these matters will continue to be guided entirely by what I believe is in the best interest of the institution and the people we serve. After my term as chair ends on May 15, I will continue to serve as a governor for a period of time to be determined. Wow. I plan to keep a low profile as a governor. There's only ever one chair of the Federal Reserve Board. When Kevin Worsh is confirmed and sworn in, he will

be that chair. Once sworn in as board chair, his new colleagues will elect him to chair the FOMC as well. Wow. As I regularly point out from this podium, our success in delivering our goals matters for all Americans. I'm confident that the Fed will continue to do its work with objectivity, integrity, and a deep commitment to serve the American people. Thank you, and I look forward to your questions. A Thank you, Mr. Chair. Appreciate the kind words about the press. Often doesn't come from the podium in different places, but appreciate that. Um, can you talk about what is gone into your decision to remain on the board? What kind of criteria are you weighing and uh how long might you stay? Thank you. Sure. So, you know, my concern is really about the series of legal attacks on the Fed, right, which threaten our ability to conduct monetary policy without considering political factors. And I want to note here, this has nothing whatever to do with verbal criticism by elected officials. Uh I I've never suggested that such ver verbal criticism is a problem and neither has anyone else here. But these legal actions by the administration are unprecedented in our 113year history and there are ongoing threats uh of additional such actions. I worry that these attacks are battering the institution and putting at risk the thing that really matters to the public, which is the ability to conduct monetary policy without taking into consideration political factors. Right? It is so important for our economy, for the people that we serve, that they can depend over time on a central bank that operates that way free of political influence. Good for you. It's part of the absolute foundation of this amazing economy that we have. It's just one of the many reasons why the US economy is the env en envy of the world. Hell yeah. That piece of institutional architecture separates successful countries from unsuccessful countries. Yep. It is extremely important not for the people who work at the Fed at any given time, but for the people that we serve that the Fed remain able to conduct monetary policy in a way that doesn't get pulled into politics trying to help or hurt any particular politician or political party. It's critical for the people that we serve. In terms of when I would leave, I will leave when I think it's appropriate to do so. Was that all your questions or was that Well, I just have a followup, which is what would you say to the criticism that by remaining on the board, you're actually taking a political act and denying uh President Trump the majority of the board, which as president he would have if you left. I don't see that at all. As I mentioned, uh you know, I'm literally staying because of the actions that have been taken. I had long planned to be retiring. Uh and uh you know the things that have happened in really in the last three months have I think left me no choice but to stay until till I see them through at least that long. Um you know in addition uh I don't see how this will interfere. My intention is not to interfere. You know, I was a governor for almost six years, and the tradition is at the Fed that governors uh who understand how difficult the role of chair is, and as a soontobe former chair, I do understand how hard it is to get consensus with 19 strong-minded people, you work with the chair. You try to you try to uh be heard, but also collaborate with the chair and try to support the chair when you can. When you can't, you can't. And I think that's the attitude that people generally take. And I'll take. Good for him. You know what? What a badass to actually stand up to these attacks, though. He's actually fighting for like what political institutions should be. In March, you described the standard practice of looking through energy shocks as conditional on inflation expectations staying anchored. Since that meeting, there has been very little progress reopening uh key energy trade corridors. Can you help us understand how the inflation outlook has changed in the intermedating period beginning with the prospects for tariff pass through resolving on the timeline that you had outlined in March before getting to the energy shock that is now on top? So, you know, I would look at it this way. Um, for a long time, we've been working on the hypothesis really that tariff uh tariffs would lead to a one-time price increase and that would go away over time. In other words, that there would be no further change. So, measured inflation wouldn't reflect that higher level going up more and more. And it's time for that to happen. You know, we really do expect that to be happening in the next two quarters. So, we'll be watching very carefully to see that what we've thought all along would happen. That's the kind of critical part of the forecast. We need to really see that with energy. It's so hard to say. Um I mentioned you know in you know sort of the textbook you would look through it an oil shock because they tend to be shortlived and they tend to revert and monetary policy works with long and variable lags. So you know

you wouldn't necessarily re react right away. I think that is all the more true given that we're several years above 2% inflation and that we're already looking through the tariff shock. Yeah, you're right, Teddy. Good comments in the chat. I agree with you. But the question about looking through energy really is not in front of us right now. We it hasn't even peaked yet. And I think we'd want to see the backside of that and progress on tariffs before we even thought about uh about reducing rates. So, if I could follow up, the statement today preserves language that has taken on some meaning uh as it was socialized when the committee was actively lowering rates. Why is that easing bias still uh ripe given how different the inflation outlook is now versus a meeting or two ago? And what more would have to happen for it to get evicted? So um that was uh as you will recall we had a discussion about that at the last meeting and we talked about it in the press conference after the March meeting. We had the same today. We had quite a vigorous discussion about that very issue and the guidance and is it still appropriate and that kind of thing. And I would say that the you know number of people on the committee who either could support that ch language change changing to a more neutral stance so that a hike is as likely as a cut. that number has increased over the intermedating period and it's easy to see why. I mean, it's it's a good question, right? You see inflation has moved up over the interim a bit. Core inflation's 3. 2 now, moving albeit just a little bit, in the wrong direction. And we know that there will be, you know, that there's uh headline inflation coming out of the Gulf. And we don't know how much that will be. We just we're going to need to see. So, it makes all the sense in the world that people would look at that and we'd have a vigorous discussion about that. You saw that three people desented over the language. I think all of those people agreed with the rate decision. Um, so the majority of the committee did not want to do that and and I was I didn't think we needed to do it at this meeting. It really was just a question of what's why do we need to do that now? You know, we have so much to learn. There's so much uncertainty about the path ahead. There doesn't need to be any rush to make that decision now. No rush is a big thing that we've been talking about. And Teddy in the comments here, you're right on. I mean, really, these shocks after shock keep inflation elevated for the shorter period of time. Hopefully by uh 2032. My goal, you know, rates are way down again. Probably will be, but like Jerome Pal says, no cuts basically until we get through this oil and tariff shock. Claire, Claire Jones, Financial Times. Um just going back to this issue of the easing bias. Um we've now got oil approaching $120 a barrel when it comes to benchmark. That's the number. Bren crude. Um if it stays around those levels 6 weeks from now, what would be your guess best guess as to whether the easing bias will still be in the statement? Thank you. Hold. I wouldn't want to guess. you know, well, first of all, we're going to have new leadership in all likelihood by then and new leadership is going to have a very important role to play in that. So, uh, I won't be standing here at this podium to answer your question. So, um, I don't know. As I mentioned, that's all I can really say is that we had a great discussion about that today. It's a, you know, it's it got it's gotten to be a better question than the interim period. We had the discussion a majority are still on the page of not feeling the need to move to that level. And I that's where I am. Yeah. Uh I get it though, you know, at a certain point you would move and that conceivably could come as soon as the next meeting. Thank you. Just to follow up on um the new leadership also seem conceivably move as soon as next meeting. I don't think they're going to move. I hold. You know, you don't want to pull a 1970s and really screw with people's expectations, which really affects inflation as well today here. But I've you know uh I think communications generally is uh I think every incoming chair takes a look at communications and it's a very healthy thing. I mean communications it's very complex and uh you know you can always be uh be looking at new things and I if that happens feels like it's going to happen that's completely appropriate thing. Hi chair pow with Axios. Um can you tell us if you've been uh in touch with incoming chairman Worsh uh any uh to what extent is this a normal transition process versus all the things swirling around uh something unusual and what can we expect when he takes uh takes that podium in a few weeks? I haven't seen him since uh seeing him at a dinner in January where I congratulated him and had a nice chat with him. Haven't seen him. I don't know what a normal process is. you know, the last process was with uh Janet Yellen, who with whom I had worked for 6 years, and so it was a you know, we were sitting down the hall from each other, so it was a very different thing. I think this is and will be a very normal standard kind of a transition process. So that's

what I expect. I have every reason to think it will be. Quick followup. Is the Supreme Court ruling on Governor Cook a factor in when you may leave as a governor? I wasn't thinking of it as such, but no, not really. I mean, I'm thinking more of the other things I mentioned. Chris. Hi. Uh, thanks for taking our question. I wanted to ask a question about your tenure and Chris Rugverber at Associated Press. Who's the blogging? Um, during your tenure as chair, you often spoke about how disadvantaged Americans benefited from extended periods of low unemployment. Uh, and the new framework the Fed adopted in 2020, some economists say elevated the Fed's employment mandate. Uh, are you worried that the pandemic inflation spike that followed will make future Fed chairs more reluctant to pursue a hot jobs market and should they be? No. Um, I don't know the answer to that. I mean what we so what we experienced um in uh the in the teens, the mid- teens was uh really low levels of unemployment for a long period of time and no reaction from inflation and we all took very much took notice of that. We also noticed that the biggest wage gains were going to people at the bottom end of the income spectrum. And we had many reports of uh I mean it felt like a fairly stable equilibrium and a lot of benefits were flowing to people at the bottom end of the uh income spectrum including companies were you know setting up in um in you know people who were confined and like training them before they got out and it was a very healthy sort of set of societal dynamics. So, of course, I think anybody would love to get back to that. Um, I don't think that anything that happened to create the global pandemic inflation was in any way related to overweighting the employment market. I mean, it was a global shock that happened essentially very similarly all over the world that had to do with closing, reopening, stimulus, and all that. And I mean you could look at a graph of 10 big economies on the page and not know which was the US and which was Germany, France and things like that. So I don't think that that insight was in any way responsible for the high inflation that we experienced. So I mean I think it's always been a balance. uh you you've got to be strong on both of our dual mandates and we just for example now we don't feel that the uh labor market is at all a source of inflation so we don't need to be worrying about that. It's been a long time since we have had to worry about that. Well actually during the pandemic recovery the labor market was super overheated and tight and that's when we had to worry about it but not now. And just on the other issue, um are you would you need do you need more assurance from the Justice Department before stepping down? Is that what you're waiting for or what else? You know, for the investigation to be well and truly over with finality and transparency and I'm waiting for that and I will leave when I think it's appropriate to do so. Yeah. Fair. A quick reminder since it's his last meeting as Fed chair, coupon code goodbye Powell is live both at meet Kevin. com and househ. com if you want that real estate AI valuation AI comes out at the uh end of June. View and interest rates because there were some members of the open market committee who've been suggesting that we may need to raise interest rates even absent the war because inflation was not coming down fast enough. Uh is there any sense that interest rates might have to go up or was this just a setup to sort of uh warn people that you're worried about the war impacts? So nobody the three denters and others who could have supported that and others who were you know who were voters and prefer non- voters who preferred it they all supported the right decision. Right? So people are not saying we need to hike now. It's more a question of you know don't we kind of feel that we should be neutral and markets are markets what are markets doing people argue that's this is consistent what markets are doing and again it's a very fair question but you know these changes there is you know it's a form of forward guidance and you want to make you don't want to make them you in a way that will be sustained and continue to make sense and not something you need to take back uh you know fairly quickly. So I think we just a group of us including me didn't feel like we needed to be in a hurry on that that markets are not confused about our reaction function. We don't have a problem to solve on that. But the other side of the argument is a good argument too. As I mentioned it's a perfectly good argument to be having good discussion to be having. So and it came out the way it came out. Well you've got uh three descents uh in favor of uh two-sided uh warning. Uh

you've got yourself staying on the board. You've got the criticism that does come from elected officials uh and you've got a lot of uh critics who have faulted the Fed for being too slow 2021 with inflation. Are you worried about Fed credibility under all of this? Is that one reason that you want to stay on? Not driving my thinking now. I mean, monetary policy is going to get made by, you know, 19 people. There's a lot of stability there. Uh I mean if you think about it any every new fair Fed chair has the same situation which is you've got 18 colleagues on the FOMC 11 of them vote during any year and you have to your job is to create consensus is it's to talk to them understand them you know be inside their thinking and be able to pull them together and get consensus and move. And that's what every Fed chair has to do. And I think Kevin Wars is actually quite well. He has the capabilities, skills to be very good at that, I would think. So I think I I'm not so worried about that process, you know. Uh I think that'll work itself out. Howard, uh thank you, Chair. Howard Schneider with Reuters. You mentioned that uh staying on as a governor, you intend to keep a low profile. I'm just wondering if you could give us a little more detail on what that looks like and how you can touch Touche um what that Yeah. walk down the steps. Uh what that looks like and particularly around the policy discussion, how you're able to uh to have your intervention and not be a shadowed chair and not have kind of an outsized influence over the process. Yeah. You know, that's just something I would never do. You know, the shadow chair thing. you know, it's I don't know what the exact specifics of it will be, but I'm going back to being a governor. I respect the role of chair. I you know, I was a chair. I was a governor for 6 years, and I know what that's like. I know and I had a, you know, pretty front row seat with particularly with Chair Yellen to whom I was close when I I was worked with Chairman Bernani for two years. But, um, you know, I I was brand new at that time. So I got a sense of what it was and I had real sympathy for how hard it is to get that group to consensus and I always felt like I you know I don't want to add to that unnecessarily and that means try to support the chairs where the chair the direction the chair wants to go in if you can. If you can't but and I think that's the way it's always worked there because the chair only has one vote plus the ability to develop consensus and if people won't be you know they won't if they're not flexible at all then how do you ever do that? And so that's why the chair has the authority the chair has really is to develop relationships with people and work with them and then put something forward that has consensus and I you know I prop I propose to be a very constructive participant in that process uh really out of respect for the office of the chair and uh in your view as a soontobe governor how do you see the risks of oil prices bleeding into core inflation in coming weeks because that was it seems like the commentary that was coming from particularly some of the Reserve Bank presidents there were elevated concerns about the bleed into core and you know here we are with three descents now what do you see as the prospect of of a core inflation you know they're those prospects are real remember though our are u and they're real and the real thing is we're going to have to wait and see we're going to need to see and the good news is we think our policy stance is just is in a very good place for us to wait and see we you know we're right kind of at the high end of neutral or perhaps mildly restrictive. U the labor market shows more and more signs of stability whereas inflation is kind of misbehaving and so maybe a little bit of uh of restriction or the high end of neutral is just the right place to be. So we can wait here and see uh and see how things work out before we act and we'll see how much that you know how much does come through into core. You see it already in air airfares of course but you may see it in many other places. Uh you know uh we just don't know yet and it's so unknowable because how long will the straight be closed? You can develop any number of scenarios that you want but we really won't know till we know. So fortunately we're in a good place to wait and let things develop. Uh thanks Mr. Chairman. um you started holding post uh post meeting press conferences for every meeting as opposed to the ones with just uh with SCPs. Can you talk about why you see that as a net positive? So we um we always said when we were doing quarterly press conferences, we always said we can move at any meeting, but we only ever moved at the quarterly SCP meetings where we had the press conference. So if you think about it, you know, we during the pandemic, we were moving like a lot at

every meeting and sometimes between meetings and doing that with our press conference, I think would have been quite challenging. It's become the industry norm. It's the standard. I don't know whether that has to remain that way. I don't know. I mean I it's just something people have become used to and I do think it's quite helpful to you know to uh I mean I I try to deliver a message on behalf of the committee rather than 18 people 18 other people going out and delivering their message and it's you know it's going to be all over the place because we do thankfully have widely disperate views. Um okay thanks. The other thing I wanted to ask about was the communications review from last year. Um uh could you describe the debate last year? what changes were considered, what you wanted, and what prevented action um any action uh on the on those changes. So, I'm not going to go into the real small specifics, but what we found very quickly was that um making changes making really large changes, for example, to the DOT plot or the SCP um it didn't have we couldn't come up with anything that had really broad support on the committee and so we just didn't we didn't really do as much on that as we might have. And uh you know I was never the world's biggest fan of the dot plot but you can't beat something with nothing. And you know there's a that we've looked at a bunch of things and uh you know it's something I like I said I think every new chair is going to look at our suite of communications and think about what would be changes. We are the only major central bank that doesn't publish a forecast and that's because we have a 19 person committee and you know you try to do it that on the at the board that's hard or the at the committee that's hard uh it's hard if you do it at the staff so it's you know it's been it works I think our communications are fine but looking at doing it in a different and better way is the most natural thing in the world thank you Um, Colobby Smith with the New York Times. If I could follow up on Mike's question about hikes, are we right to assume that the hawkish outcome for the Fed is still one in which the committee just extends the pause in rate cuts? Yeah. And to what extent is there a growing sense within the committee that monetary policy really isn't just restrictive at all right now? Um, the economy is holding up relatively well despite this major energy shock. The unemployment rate has ticked lower. inflation was moving sideways even before the war and is now moving higher. Um so where is the committee at on that debate? Yeah, you know where we're at is we think our really we think our policy rate is in a good place. Um if we need to hike we will certainly signal that and we will certainly do it and if we need to cut then if it's appropriate to cut then we'll signal the opposite. I think we because we feel like we're in a good place to move in either direction. Um, nobody's calling for a hike right now. Um, so it really is going to depend on how things evolve. Uh, and you know that that's really where it is and as I mentioned clo you know much closer question this cycle on changing the guidance but ultimately we didn't. And as it relates to the war at what point do you think the risk to growth will be larger than the risk to inflation as this conflict drags on? you know, you just have to find that out empirically, you know, with given our um the fact that we're, you know, a big exporter of energy and that our economy is far less energy intensive, oil intensive than it was during the 70s. Um, you know, the effects on the United States are really substantially less than those of Western Europe or Asia. We're feeling much greater effects from these things. the effects we're feeling in, you know, in the current situation currently and in sort of what's priced in which is, you know, a relatively quick outcome. If this goes on for much longer and prices go much higher, then we'll feel that much more. And of course, I'm talking about aggregate inflation numbers. We know, we're very well aware that people are experiencing higher gas prices all over the country now, and that hurts that and these are those hikes may continue to happen. and other things are going to start to reflect air airline fairs I mentioned and other products and services that are dependent upon petroleum and derivatives of petroleum people are going to start to feel that Edward thank you chair Edward Lawrence with uh Fox Business so I guess I'll just ask you directly on this markets don't see a rate cut at all this year is what they're predicting do you think that we are at the neutral rate why or why not, you know, the neutral rate is a we cannot know it with uh with certainty. I

think pretty close to the neutral rate. Yeah. I always had it, you know, between 3 and 4%. We're a little north of 3 and a half. So, that's well in the range of what I would consider a reasonable reasonable, but at the higher end of the range of what I would consider reasonable neutral rate. Um, you know, I think you're the labor market is still probably cooling off just a little bit. Um, and I I don't think there's a much of a case for any case really for the for uh policy looking, you know, meaningfully restrictive, maybe mildly restrictive or neutral, I would say. Um, and I want to follow up on some of the other questions about uh your future a little bit. The first time we've seen four descents now since October of 1992, are you handing off a divided Fed? You know, the thing to remember is uh we have always had vigorous debates and uh they're excellent debates. I have to say they're they've been really good. Uh and uh we're in an unusually difficult situation. So we we've really had four supply shocks. You can actually you can say more than four, but at a minimum we've we had the pandemic, we had the invasion of the of Ukraine, we had tariffs, and now we have of Iran and the oil um you know the oil spike. So those every supply shock has the capability of right driving inflation up and unemployment up and what do you do? You know, you're it's central bank has a really hard time knowing what to do. So the right thing to do is to try to balance the achievement of those two goals. And that's what our framework calls for us to do. But these are really tough, difficult judgments. You've got to have a forecast for each variable. You've got to think how long it's going to take to get back to target. You got to think how restrictive or not policy. So it's only natural that you have a range of views on the committee. You know, people are going to see it different ways. They're going to have different risk tolerances and that kind of thing. I mean, if everybody agreed, that would be surprising. Uh and I think it's only it's partly a function of the extraordinarily challenging set of supply shocks that we've been dealing with now for five six years. Thank you so much, Chair Powell. Selena Wayne with ABC News. Are you confident that Kevin Worsh will stand up to political pressure from President Trump? So, he testified very strongly to that effect in his hearing, and I I'll take him at his word. And when it comes to gas, right now it's over $4 a gallon. Inflation just hit a 2-year high. Should Americans expect to be paying higher gas prices for the rest of this year? And in your view, does that take a rate cut off of the table? And secondly, by staying on as uh Fed Governor, what message do you think you're sending to the president? I don't know what gas prices are going to do for the rest of the year and um it will depend on how long the straight remains closed and how quick quickly it can be reopened and that kind of thing. But remember when gas prices go up um that's disposable income coming out of people's pockets. So they're going to spend less on other things. So there will be a hit to GDP. So it's a you know it's a question whether spending you know goes down uh to offset the inflationary effects. So it's not the answer isn't obvious uh exanti whether you should move your rate o over because of that we'll have to see how it evolves message by staying on I'll stand on what I said earlier hi Victoria Aguido with Politico um during your tenure fed independence has come under pressure in a lot of different ways and I was just wondering ing practically speaking, where do you see Fed independence as coming from? Is it the law? Is it political support from Congress? Is it the actions of the Fed? What sustains Fed independence? Well, it's, you know, it's to a significant extent it is the law. And, you know, we've had to go to court to successfully so far to defend it. But you know the law does create a setting in which the Fed can and is directed to uh make monetary policy without consideration of political factors. And so part of it is law. But it goes beyond that though. There's a set of customs. There's a boundary line between the Fed and the administration Treasury Department. And we need to respect those, continue to respect those boundaries about what the Feds are responsible for and what the Treasury is rest of the administration's respons responsible. So, some of it is legal. Um, in fact, it's all legal at the end of the day. But there it's more than just monetary policy. We, you know, we don't want to use our tools to we haven't wanted achieve goals that are really

tools to achieve goals that are really clearly outside our mandate. Every administration looks at our tools and thinks that would be good to repurpose those to serve other purposes, but that gets drag that's dragging us into politics and into fiscal policy. So, we've resisted that. Well, and maybe another way of asking it too is do you think that Fed independence is as strong now as when you became chair? And if so, why stronger? Look, I think it's at risk. I mean, I think these these, you know, these legal assaults, if you will, as I mentioned, you know, we're the institution is being battered over these things. We're having to resort to, you know, the courts to enforce our legal, you know, in not even it's not so much independence. It's really the ability to do monetary to make monetary policy without political considerations. That's what we're talking about. And uh we've had to do that and we've been successful. so far. But that's not over. None of that is concluded yet. And it's, you know, it's really important. It's not about people who work at the Fed or the institution. It's about the benefits of a central bank that makes decisions based on analysis and our best thinking. Uh rather than, you know, trying to help or hurt politicians. It's, you know, that there's a bright line between central banks who do one and do the other and successful countries have uniformly successful advanced economy countries have a really strong set of protections around their central bank just for that reason. So that's what it's all about. I you know I think I am confident as I said in my remarks that the Fed will continue to make its decision based on analysis, rigorous analysis and not on political considerations. But we've had to fight for it. And I I' you know, I'd like to think that, we can get out of that era and go back to respecting, you know, what the law says and what custom has been, which is to, you know, let the Fed do our thing. We're, you know, we're not we're it's a it's an institution full of human beings who work super hard to get things right for the benefit of the public. We're all human. Don't expect for perfection, but do expect us to make, you know, decisions without political considerations. Standing ovation, please. And the very best analysis we can bring. Good, dude. End it on that. Katarina. Damn, that was good. Katarina Sariva, Bloomberg News. Damn. Um, how would you characterize um what you've heard from your colleagues on your decision to stay? Um, do you have their support? And then have you heard concern from your colleagues um about continued legal attacks from um the executive branch? Is this something that others have uh you know talked to you about? So I think that um I don't want to report on what my colleagues think. They can speak for themselves but you know yeah there are there widespread concerns that these things may continue. That's all I'll say. And uh you know and that would be a problem. And um no Scott didn't mark it. Um and then I just also wanted to ask about um Governor Waller's speech on the reserve banks. um what you know do you have any thoughts on centralizing some of those functions in the way he described and then um have you know do are you concerned that something like that could potentially be a slippery slope to um you know to consolidate reserve bank functions even more in such a way where you know the central bank ultimately loses some of that important regional information. So we try to be good stewards of the public's money and efficient and Chris in particular Chris Waller is particularly passionate about that of course so are the reserve so are the presidents and you know it's a question of how do you accomplish it uh we of course and Chris said this in his speech we you know we want 12 strong independent central banks with their own staffs and their own monetary policy views and all that but you know there are things that are done in all 12 which could well be done at one much more efficiently and with cost savings. And so there's a back and forth going on that, but everybody everybody's on the same page. The other thing he touched on was uh the idea of removing Reserve Bank presidents from office over different views on monetary policy. And I would just agree with him so strongly that would be the beginning of the end of the Fed's ability to make monetary policy independently if every administration could come in and do that. you're just another cabinet agency at that point. So that's not something that I would support. Chris said the same thing. Yeah. Christine, thanks Chair Pal. Christine Romans, NBC News. I want to ask about legacy when the history books are written. How do you think your stewardship at the Fed will be remembered for the past eight years? You know, I'm going to just say that uh

that's for someone else to say. I'll give you a mulligan on that half. All right. I'm gonna ask you about uh misbehaving inflation then. You talked about those four big shocks, supply shocks over the past 5 years and in inflation still misbehaving. What's your message to American families who feel like inflation has not been under control for them really since the co reopening. Job isn't done. You know, we're committed to bring inflation back down to 2% and sustainably. That's our goal and we will we'll stick at it until that happens. We keep getting these events keep happening which keep driving up costs and you know the best thing we can do is to use our tools to guide inflation back down to 2%. I think trying to get there really quickly could be very costly in terms of uh of job loss and things like that but we try to get there over time in a way that does the least damage possible. And you know, our commitment to that is never ending and unshakable. How would you describe the economy outside of the misbehaving inflation? I mean, um, it's still awfully resilient given all of the blows. I don't know that you can be awfully resilient. So, it's actually quite resilient, I would say, cuz it's a positive thing if I can have that amendment. Yeah. That the, you know, growth is really solid across our economy. Some of that is um that consumer spending is hanging in pretty well. The most recent data are good and some of it is just the apparently insatiable demand for data centers all over the United States. So a lot of uh business investment going into building data centers and every reason to think that continues. So you've got an economy that's growing at 2% or better. PDFP which is private domestic final purchases that which is really a better signal of uh of a momentum in the economy is actually higher than that. So that's you know that's a positive thing. The if you look at the unemployment rate it's 4. 3%. So that's a low rate that's pretty close to mainstream estimates of the natural rate. We've been there for a long time. So, it's it doesn't feel like a good labor market to some who don't have jobs because quits are really low, hires are really low, and there's effectively no new net job uh creation. So, that's a that's you know, in a sense, the labor market is in balance, but it's an unusual and uncomfortable kind of a balance where people who don't have jobs will have a hard time breaking in unless somebody quits their job. Y So, um so that's pretty good. You know, inflation is the thing we need to work on, and it's partly tariffs, which we think that inflation should subside over the course of this year because it's kind of a one-time increase. It shouldn't be repeated, and that should start happening pretty soon. The energy in inflation that we're getting should go through fairly quickly. Uh, and we'll just have to see how that works out. In the meantime, you know, we think our policy stance is in a good place for us to hold and wait developments. Jennifer Thank you, Chair Pal. Jennifer Shawnberger with Yahoo Finance. At the risk of beating the dead horse here, clearly three members objected to keeping that easing bias in the statement. And you said that the majority still didn't need to uh move to new language at this point. So does the majority of the committee still have a bias towards cuts at this point or has the bias on the committee shifted away from cuts towards holding or hikes if that was needed? I so I think that you know the center is moving toward a more neutral place and that's sort of what markets are saying too. I just think, you know, uh there's a lot of signaling going on when you change guidance like that. And so we just I guess the major a majority of us didn't feel like we needed to send a signal on that right now. Uh and but maybe it'll come to that. And the reason is because, you know, we're kind of waiting to see what happens with events in the Middle East and what are the implications of those events for the US economy. So it was just a there's a group who feels like we don't need to be in a hurry to do that. We get it and of course we will move to a hiking bias if we want to hike and we'll move to a new a neutral bias before that. But there was a difference over whether to do it at this meeting at a meeting at which all but one of us agreed that the that the rate decision was correct which was not to move. And you just said moments ago that you believe Fed independence is at risk. Is it safe to say that you want to stay on as a governor to serve as a check and balance on that? I want to stay until I will stay until it's I feel it's appropriate for me to leave and yes, that is really what is driving this. Uh that's fair. I'm not uh I'm not looking to be, you know, a high-profile uh dissident or anything like that. I I'm more looking at the other aspects of this and

wanting to see that things have calmed down and we're returning to a traditional model of working with the people that you have and bringing them to consensus and respecting that consensus. That's what I'm hoping to see. Matt Eaggan, thanks Towel. Matt Eaggan with CNN. Um, you've made many tough decisions in your time at the Fed and as your time as chair comes to a close and you think about your tenure and perhaps your legacy, are there any decisions that stand out as ones that you're particularly proud of? And are there any that with the benefit of hindsight you would take a mulligan on? Yeah, I it's hard I wouldn't want to signal single out individual things at this point. You know, I'll just say uh you know, we all of us together have consistently tried to do what we think is best for the American people based on our tools and our objectives that Congress has given us. It's been very challenging because we've been in a situation of supply shock, supply shocks really for 6 years. And that's just a very different situation than for a very long time what the Fed and other central banks were doing all the time was demand management and you know and there was always the inflation mandate but inflation was low for 25 years. So this is a very different world and a much more challenging one where you have to balance the two objectives and by the way central banks that have a an inflation mandate have to do exactly the same thing because they're balancing economic activity. So that's been challenging and we've, you know, we've tried to do our very best through these really challenging uh times and I'm really proud of uh the work that I've done that my colleagues and I have done during these uh these years. Now to follow up on some of the discussion around Fed independence, can you explain to the public why this notion of Fed independence, which might sound kind of wonky to some, is so critical? I mean, what are the consequences if either the Supreme Court rules against such unanchored inflation expectations blah blah blah make decisions more end it and give them a standing ovation. So every major advanced economy in the world has made the same decision the United States has made and that is that they want to take the making of monetary policy the setting of interest rates to support the economy to achieve maximum employment and price stability. They want to take that out of the direct control of elected politicians and the reason is elected politicians are always running for election and they'll always want low rates and that will re lead to inflation over time. So after you know literally centuries of experience with that the whole world moved to the different model and it's worked great. I mean this is the era in which inflation was under control for 40 years. Then we had the pandemic inflation everywhere on in the world and now we have inflation that had gone pretty much all the way back to target really close to and now is being buffeted by the energy shock in the US buffeted by the tariff shock as well. So but what I would say to the general public is that's the backstory is that um stop the count. Don't think about an institution being independent. Think about it this way that you want people to make monetary policy and set interest rates to benefit the general public and to try to achieve economic goals which are maximum employment and price stability and focus only on that and ignore political considerations completely ignore them. It's this isn't bipartisan. This is nonpartisan. So we we want to just we just work directly for the American people doing these things. We don't think, "Oh, this I want to do this because the president says it's a good idea or because there's an election coming up and I want to speed up or slow down the economy. " I mean, that think about that. If that's if that that's what we were doing, we'd have no credibility. Markets would lose faith in us and our ability to control inflation and and have any respect would be, you know, would be gone. And let me say, whatever people say, the markets believe in that we will produce 2% inflation. If you look at longer run expectations, markets believe that they there's no sense in which our credibility in the markets has weakened. It's just not the case. It's people do get it that this is our commitment and that we will achieve it and it's priced in. If you disagree with that, then you can go ahead and bet against the markets, but the markets are pricing in Fed credibility. Yeah. Okay, we'll go to Richard for the last question. Last question. Thank you. Thank you, Chair Pal. uh Richard Escobido with CBS News. Uh we've talked a lot about gasoline prices and even you mentioned airline ticket prices, both of which are up dramatically because of the war in Iran. And so I wonder, are you seeing that weigh down consumer spending in other parts of the economy? Um and if so, how worried are

you that will be a drag on growth? You don't see it in spending yet. You really don't. I mean, as one of your colleagues said, the economy has been resilient. It really has. Not just this time, but it's been remarkably resilient for some years now. The US economy has just powered through shock after shock. And consumers are still spending. And that's what the banks will tell you, credit card companies will tell you, the retail sales numbers that we got most recently. People are still spending. And um you know, how long can that go on in a world where if gas prices were to go up a bunch more, that's taking otherwise spendable money out of people's pockets. But right now we don't actually see much slowdown in yet from certainly none from this. But you think logically you will because people have a certain amount of money to spend. If they're spending 25% more on gas or something like that then you know that's going to come out of other spending. But we again we don't see it yet. Um one last thing you mentioned those economies in Southeast Asia that are particularly dependent on petroleum. Um they make a lot of the stuff that American consumers buy. So, was there any discussion today about whether or not those costs getting passed along to consumers is a real concern and whether or not that might push up inflation? So, all of those things are in the models that we use to calculate inflation. So, we, you know, they're just parts. You can ask about anything like that and they are they have a place the staff has a place where they're looking at that and pricing in what will happen with higher prices and that kind of thing. Uh so it's there the effects are not that big yet. Uh you know we're a huge economy. The import sector is only 10% of the economy. So we're not like a European country where 50% of the uh external of GDP is in the external sector. We're also you know as I mentioned we're an oil exporter. So, we're not feeling the same kind of pain and we're not likely to feel the same kind of pain that economies in Western Europe and certainly in Asia are feeling. Anyway, thank you very much everyone. Standing ovation, I won't see you next time. A well, following his final Fed's meeting as chair. Well, that was it. Jerome Powell's final press conference as Fed chair. Just close the [ __ ] door. Man, he's going to be missed. But there's good news. We have a lot to talk about what Jerome Powell just said and a special coupon code called Goodbye Powell before we raise prices with some amazing new updates coming out in May for the Meet Kevin course and then in June for Househack. com. But for now, let's focus on the Federal Reserve. It is over and we are going to cover uh at the end of this segment a report card on drum Powell. We'll talk about his bullishness on the economy. We'll talk about rate cuts and a bar that he sets for rate hikes, which is also bullish and kind of important. We'll talk about Powell leaving versus not leaving, transitory inflation, all the good stuff. We're going to try to keep it short and just stick to what was different this time. Uh so, one thing that was different this time is we had an 8 to4 vote, which was the least amount of consensus that we have seen since October of 1992. Myin voted for a cut of 25 basis points. that's the only reason he seems to exist anyway. uh although you know he does have some sound logical arguments for continuing to cut and ensure that labor market doesn't break through as it sort of has been trending down though recently stabilizing and hammock Qashqari and Logan really voted for a decline because they wanted to remove the easing bias from the statement which it's almost you really have to kind of read between the lines to get it but basically in their statement the implication is hey we're going to wait on the extent and timing of additional adjustments as we assess incoming data. And so they wanted a little bit more of a clear, hey, we're just not going to do anything until the oil shock clears, which in fairness is probably one of the worst or most complicated issues we face. Now, I have sort of a warning bell that starts ringing that I've been paying attention to since, you know, Brent was $95 with course members. I'm like, look, we start getting to 120 on Brent crude and markets are going to slowly start reacting to that. That's why this Monday I went into markets. I'm like, you know, we're at 665 on the cues. Probably not the week for calls. You know, markets on the cues right now are slightly green, but we're at 661. So, we're still down from where we were Monday. Let earnings happen. Let's get through some of this volatility right now. Donald Trump is prepping us. And this was wild. This was happening during the uh Fed statement release. Donald Trump apparently telling us that he thinks the war in Ukraine might end before the war in Iran, which is literally the last thing you want to hear. We saw oil move up another 3 or 4 percentage points uh after those comments, which now push us

at 119, which is just $1 away from my alarm bell. And practically, just to give it to you straight, uh the reason I call 120 the alarm bell is not because it's some recessionary threshold. It's not. It's just that's when everybody starts talking about it again. And the more people start talking about it, the institutions start complaining about it. Oh my gosh, if we get to 130 or 150 or this, that's usually when you start getting more of that hedging and selling. So, it's sort of like an early alarm bell to where you get institutions getting a little bit more nervous, which could lead to less of that rush to buying stocks, especially when the CNN greed and fear. I really hate even using the name CNN, but the greed and fear index right now is at greed. I like I it wouldn't be unreasonable for you to have a miss at a certain company in earnings over the next two or three weeks, see a little bit of a pullback. Uh and this is despite the fact that I've broadly become more bullish on economic data since the war has begun. Our bull bear scale is almost at 7 and a half right now. And a lot of that is based on underlying economic data. What whether it was the capital goods spending that we saw this morning, xair, ex-military spending, obviously a lot of that artificial intelligence or uh just the stabilization and growth that we're seeing in the labor market even on private payroll surveys. Now Jerome Powell did pick up on th that as well. In fact, he said uh PDFP, which is, you know, one of his favorite measures, uh is actually growing faster uh than what we're seeing on um uh some of the GDP numbers or even uh you know, the numbers that we got this morning. Uh commercial purchases, that stands for private domestic final purchases. It's sort of the Fed's preferred measure for how the economy is growing. And he argues that PDFB P indicates that the economy is actually growing better than a 2% rate. And he actually acknowledges the pain that people have, which is if you don't have a job right now or you've just lost your job or you've been unemployed or you know people who are unemployed, you don't feel like the economy is good. You feel like a crappy place or a crappy situation, which is totally reasonable and fair because it's so much harder to get a job now and you're sort of waiting for somebody else to lose a job to hopefully fill that seat. And so that has made the labor market less desirable for people, but it's also created less labor market inflation, which is ironically good for the Federal Reserve and reducing some of those inflationary pressures, especially since, as Powell put it, we've been dealing with shock after shock. You know, whether it was Ukraine following COVID or now recently the Iran shock or what we saw in 24 or three, you know, we had a banking crisis for a period of time, right? uh there's been a lot. So anyway, this disscent though where there's this talk about r like removing the easing bias in my opinion does set up a little bit of a harder time for Kevin Worsh who will be coming in May 15th as the Fed chair and then of course we have our midJune I think it's the 19th mid June will be the next FOMC presser and I'm a little sad because I've been covering Jerome Powell honestly for eight years it's weird you know I said if he sticks this soft landing I got to put a u a statue in my yard of drum Powell, you know, with some kind of like smug arms crossed face, maybe with like a hard hat on, you know, for the Jerome Powell Trump meeting. Uh, somebody apparently is going to email me their info on making a bronze bust. You know, I'll go for bronze or stone or whatever. You know, we need like, Federal Reserve marble. Anyway, you could email me if you ever have questions on the courses or you ever have questions, whatever, just email us. Email staff meetke. com. data dependent, right? Anyway, um you know, so I do think that it is getting a little bit harder for the Federal Reserve to create consensus because there's a lot of talk about, hey, like we don't know how long this oil shock is going to last, the direction of uh the straight of horm uh the direction of um you know the consu of consumer spending. Consumer spending is holding up. Jerome Powell echoed what we heard from bank earnings JP Morgan Wells we've covered that on the channel that broadly the consumer spend is holding up as it has been really since co uh and so the question is you know how much longer can consumers keep spending through these higher oil and air prices or whatever and so far it's been resilient. Now, of course, part of that is probably because the biggest spenders are higher net worth or even middle net worth individuals who have exposure to the stock market, which has been very bullish over the last few weeks. We called on buying calls and going bullish literally the day of the ceasefire. And I think I had this mountain of people complaining saying, "Kevin, you're an idiot. Stocks are going to go down even more. " And I'm like, God, the more these comments complain, the more I think I'm right about this call that we're going straight up. And we did. You know, the call is straight up on hardware. It went straight up. AMD is up like 50%. Soxel

was up like, you know, 126%. And I think the next move after hardware, even though we might have a little bit of a dip here in the near future with these oil prices, will be software, but that could still be 6 months out. You got to get that SpaceX IPO. But anyway, I do think that when Walsh comes in June, it's going to be a little harder for him to try to bias towards cuts because people at the Fed, you know, these voting members, they don't want to cut right now. They want to hold. Holding is really the bias. And so Jerome Powell argues that he's likely going to stay at the Federal Reserve until the battering of the Federal Reserve is completely science, sealed, delivered, and over. He says over the weekend there was some optimism that they, you know, they gave him some comments that they won't reopen the case against him unless there's a criminal referral from the Federal Reserve's Inspector General, which there won't be since the Federal Reserve's Inspector General has already cleared Powell. Uh, but he wants confirmation that there's no intention that they're going to restart investigations. Uh, and Powell won't leave until he's assured that it's over. So, he's going to stay. This is not a surprise because if he left the day after he leaves, I my anticipation was that Trump would just refile a lawsuit against Powell and then he'd have to defend that personally and it'd kind of be like dirty. So Powell mentions he's staying as a check and balance. He doesn't want to be a shadowfed chair. He wants to keep a low profile and uh you know he wants to be part of maintaining what he believes is an independent political institution. And you might not like Powell. He's certainly not been perfect. No person is. But I have to say if you call him a politician, I don't know politician or you know a bureaucrat might be the better word, he's probably my favorite bureaucrat. And it's kind of sad to sort of see him kind of like retire and fade out into the distance because I actually think he has the balls to stand up for what he believes in. Whether or not you believe he's right or wrong, I think he has the balls to stand up for it and I really respect that. I think he's transparent. uh you know, I don't think he's like an insider trader slime ball or corrupt or a fraud. Like, I think those are all uh slanders against him. And you know, maybe my judgment is wrong, but I think uh I personally think he's a great person and I'm sad to see him leave. Maybe it's just because I've been covering him for eight years. Uh but uh anyway, so uh Powell's going to stay uh he does get to stay until at least uh if he wants until maximally, I should say, January 31st of 2028. Uh Donald Trump will still be in office for another year after that. So he can't wait out all of Trump's term, but he can certainly get through midterms. And that's probably where Powell, you know, maybe before the holidays he checks out or, you know, whatever. Uh but overall, Powell reiterates uh really that we shouldn't expect cuts until probably 2027. We have to get through these shocks and we need to start seeing those onetime effects from the tariffs roll over the next 6 months because they were applied in April, May, June, July, August, September, all the way through November. We should start seeing some of those year-over-year effects roll over May, June, July, all the way through November. You know, we had our Chinese tariff deal late in November of 2025. So, you got to get all those numbers to roll over year-over-year. That's why Powell says over the next 6 months, you're going to be paying attention to those numbers rolling over. If those numbers roll over at the same time oil prices come down, then we can potentially start hinting about, you know, rate cuts again. Uh but potentially as soon as the next meeting, we're actually going to remove the easing bias and just go towards a neutral. We're holding until we get more data. we're go meeting by meeting, you know, all that good stuff. So, basically, don't expect any movement from the Fed anytime soon. Now, as far as rate hikes, Powell actually kind of put a bar on this a little bit. Uh he said, "We're trying to get inflation down with the least amount of damage. We don't want to do it quickly, and so we're willing to be patient because we don't want to essentially crash the labor market. " To me, that was actually a very solid sign that the Federal Reserve isn't rushing to repeat the 1970s where they like rapidly raise rates and you know, this causes other problems. You know, some argue that actually induces inflation itself by higher interest rates, which increases cost of goods sold, which therefore increases the prices that people are charged, which is entirely possible. Uh, and in fact even likely. you know, how much that contributes relative to demand is obviously a question for economists to debate. But, you know, to me, Powell implied that the bar to hike is very high. And with WSH, it's probably also very high. So, I don't think you're going to get hikes. As much as people are going to clamor for that, I think you're going to get patience, especially since Powell says we're probably a little above neutral. Neutral rates probably 3 and 1/2 and we're slightly above 3 and 1/2 right now, sitting at about to be exact 3. 62. 625 is where rates sit right now, right? That's between three and a half and 3. 75. That midpoint, that's roughly where we sit right now, which is like an eighth above neutral. And Powell thinks that's

roughly the right place. Uh now, Pal's not going to be the chair anymore, but it's likely that others agree based on the voting that we're seeing and the commentary that we're seeing from others. So, I actually agree with this strategy. I don't think there's a reason to rush uh for rate uh cuts at this point, especially because of what we're seeing with ADP. Now, a lot of people haven't been paying attention to ADP, but last couple weeks of ADP, we've been averaging on a weekly basis through April 11th, 160,000 jobs created on the private ADP perils report. It's fantastic. Take that freaking jobs money and go join us using coupon code goodbye Powell. Expiring that tomorrow night. We're just doing a quick one for Powell here and then we'll raise the prices again because we've got some really cool new things coming out for course members uh in the Meet Kevin app, the desktop version. I mean we are developing this stuff like crazy. It's fascinating what we're building in the background. I can't wait to share it all. But anyway, this is u uh you know this is broadly good the data that we're seeing. This is why the bull bear scale moves up. Now one thing that I've been speculating on is that I almost feel like when the bull bear scale is my high but at the same time like the greed and fear index is also high. It's not a time to buy. Like in my opinion, a good time to buy is when this needle is at fear or obviously extreme fear, fear or below. When this needle is at fear or below and Kevin is above like a six or seven, right? Because that gives you sort of a wedge if you will because it means the broader market doesn't sort of align with Kevin's bullishness. I actually agree with Powell though where Powell argues, look, the economy is doing great. I mean, he didn't declare victory here, but he's pretty optimistic about what we're seeing, not only on spending, of course, in part driven by artificial intelligence, uh, in large part, frankly, uh, but also what's going on with the stabilization of the labor market. I would even go as far as calling it rebounding at this point with what we're seeing. And hopefully that continues. Obviously, things could change depending on how uh long the straight of horses is closed. But overall, this all felt very stable. I think he ended it on a high here. Very respectable. I think he had a few mic drop moments. Uh and um you know he argues that typically we're going to look through an oil shock. We've heard that before. Uh but um you know it's just a matter of time how long this oil shock continues. He's indicated that near-term inflation expectations have started to rise. That's probably due to oil prices literally skyrocketing. You know we're over double where we were in January. Uh we're about We were about 60 bucks on Brent in January and we're at about 120 bucks now just for the sake of exactness. Uh so you know economyy's holding up resilient Powell's happy and I think he's leaving on a high note. I think he's done very well and if I you know I mean that's a problem obviously that the 10ear is 4. 41. It's not great. Mortgage rates going up again but that's all right. We'll probably see higher for longer as we've said. And um anyway, if I had to give Powell a report card, honestly, I mean, he wasn't perfect. Uh but I'd still probably give him like a 96 out of 100. You know, it'd still be an A+. You know, it's not 100. You know, we know we had the little transitory oops dupes. It just lasted too long, right? It led the Fed to be too late in 2022. uh but they acknowledge that uh that slow reaction function. Uh but other otherwise broadly they've sailed this economy and directed this economy very well. I think there's um there are still underlying issues to deal with. Uh and Wars will have to deal with that. His reputation doesn't make me very excited about the grade that he's going to get, but who knows? Maybe he's a changed man. So we'll see and we'll be covering it. That's obviously my opinion. And if you want more of my opinion in terms of uh trades, short-term trades, medium-term trades, which would be like 6 months to a year or long-term trades like 10-year trades uh or really investments uh and even if you have questions about investing in real estate or uh you know the stock companies you want analyzed or whatever, make sure to join us in the uh live streams we do almost every morning when the market is open and right before the market is open, we do our alpha report. You go to meet me. com, you can join that and uh we'll look forward to seeing you there. A lot of people write that off on their taxes as well as education. And folks, we'll see you in the next time. Uh oh yeah, and then a quick note since I see somebody leaving a comment here. Uh I made some delicious bread yesterday. If you want a good bread recipe, I put it on my Instagram at me Kevin as a story. I'm actually going to go eat some of it right now cuz I'm really excited about it and then we'll see what happens with earnings. But anyway, uh, delicious molasses honeybread, whole wheat protein, like heavy on protein. Oh, it's great. Anyway, we'll see you soon. Thanks for being here. Good luck on earnings if you're playing