Fed Chair Addresses Economic Path

646 in the morning. It's Thursday. It's Mike Elliott, Columbus's morning news over to the legacy retirement group.com phone line to NBC News Radio's Rory O'Neill. Yesterday, the Fed met Rory, and they held interest rates steady, no increase after, I think, three straight quarter point drops late last year. And really, and then I think the next meaning is in March, but really we're kind of looking at the economic path for the next, you know, four, five, six months in this country. What will we know? Yeah, so the Fed chair and the rest of the board decided to hold rates where they are. You said they just had three straight rate cuts. The message we got from Chairman Jerome Powell was, yeah, you know, look, the employment numbers are doing better than we thought. Inflation a little bit high, but trending in the right direction. So their thought essentially is let's just stay the course here and hold things where they are. There are still questions about what impacts the tariffs will have long term. And you know, President Trump is always like, you get a tariff, you get a tariff. No, wait, your tariff comes off. So the Fed is trying to figure out, oh, wait, what's the economic impact here of these rapidly changing tariff policies? And then AI is another factor on employment. You know, the Fed has to do two things. It has to keep inflation low and keep employment high. And with this burst of AI, you know, it really is. challenging to figure out what the employment picture is going to be long term. Like I said, the next meeting for the Fed is in March, so no February meeting. A lot of times they'll indicate what they're going to do, maybe a thinly veiled kind of showing their hand. Did they do that yesterday as what would happen maybe in the March meeting? Yeah, essentially they're still on track. They think to have two rate cuts this year. But keep in mind, there were two board members, governors who wanted to go with rate cuts now. And the March meeting will be Chairman Jerome Powell's last. So a new Trump appointed Fed chair will come in. And then does that change the tone and tenor? And today, because clearly President Trump wants these rates lower, faster. So things might change in March. But again. The Wall Street rule of thumb is they're expecting two more rate cuts this year.