Former Fed economist Claudia Sahm, the founder of Sahm Consulting and creator of The Sahm Rule — a recession indicator — joins Julia La Roche on episode 107 for a wide-ranging discussion on macro and the Federal Reserve.
In this episode, Sahm noted that the economy is potentially at an inflection point, and we’ll know soon if we’re getting a soft landing or are headed in a slow grind that could lead us over the edge and into recession.
At the moment, she’s in the 50-50 baseline case when it comes to recession. To be sure, Sahm is concerned about the cooling in the labor market. She noted, "Once things get going in a bad direction, they keep going.”
Throughout her career, Sahm has worked at the Federal Reserve, the White House, ad has advised Congress. She’s the creator of the Sahm Rule, a reliable indicator of a recession based on the unemployment rate. The rule was developed as a trigger for automatically sending out relief like stimulus checks in a recession, taking the politics out of it.
Links:
Stay-At-Home-Macro: https://stayathomemacro.substack.com
X: https://twitter.com/Claudia_Sahm
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/claudiasahm/
0:00 Welcome Claudia Sahm
0:44 Potentially an inflection point
2:07 Labor market
3:40 What’s weighing on consumers?
6:30 Long and variable lags
10:03 Has the Fed done too much?
11:50 Risk of doing too much is aligned with the risk of doing too little
14:58 Fed’s inflation fight
19:02 Assessment of the consumer today
23:09 Great Recession
25:54 Sahm Rule
31:17 Are we in a recession according to the Sahm Rule?
32.22 Labor
36:00 Risk of a recession?
40:05 50/50 case of a recession
42:56 Housing
47:22 A decade Federal Reserve
53:00 Storytelling is the most important part of the forecasting
57:00 Groupthink at the Fed
1:01:12 Parting thoughts
#133 Jim Bianco On Why The 10-Year Treasury Yield Could Hit 5.5%, Implications For Stock Market, And Concerns About The Bitcoin Spot ETF
#132 Morgan Housel: Save Like A Pessimist And Invest Like An Optimist
#131 Sallie Krawcheck: Nothing Bad Happens When Women Have More Money
#130 Dr. Charles Calomiris On Fiscal Dominance And The Return of Zero-Interest Bank Reserve Requirements
#129 Fundstrat's Tom Lee, Analyst Who Nailed The 2023 Stock Market Rally, Shares His 2024 Market Outlook
#128: Felix Zulauf: 'Hell Will Break Loose' — The Next Big Crisis In Late 2020s Will Be A Shocker
#127 Grant Williams: Get Rid Of Certainty — Be Prepared For A Recession And A Soft Landing
#126 Liz Ann Sonders On The 2024 Market Outlook, A Different Investing Environment, And Why You Can’t Rule Out A Recession
#125 Jason Calacanis On American Society And Getting Past The Victim Mentality, Friendship With Elon Musk And Owning The First Tesla Model S, The All-In Podcast And Leaving Millions On The Table
#124 Michael Howell: Rising Liquidity, Monetary Inflation, And Why Gold Could Surge To $3,000
#123 Cullen Roche On Inflation, Why The Fed Won't Cut Rates Soon, And Is The S&P 500 Broken?
#122 Charles Payne On The Bifurcated Economy, Being An Unbreakable Investor, And The Roaring 2020s
#121 Raoul Pal: Get Ready For ‘Macro Summer’ — Falling Rates, Falling Inflation, And Growth Picking Up
#120 Dr. Gary Shilling On Recession Risk, Inflation, Rate Cuts, And Bonds
#119 Michael Kao: The Four Horsemen Of Economic Resilience, And Why We Haven't Seen A Hard Landing (Yet)
#118 Jim Rogers: A Recession Is Not Here Today, But I Can See It Coming
#117 Ted Oakley On Staying Rich With A Balanced Portfolio
#116 Lyn Alden On Broken Money, Higher Inflation, Gold, And Bitcoin
#115 Dr. Lacy Hunt On The Impending Recession
#114 Bob Elliott On Why It's Time For A 10% Gold Allocation
Create your
podcast in
minutes
It is Free
The emPOWERed Half Hour
U.S Property Podcast
Aligned Money Show
Dubai Property Podcast
The Ramsey Show
The Clark Howard Podcast