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This is the Bloomberg Surveillance Podcast. I'm Jonathan Ferrow, along with Lisa Bromwitz and am Marie Hordern. Join us each day for insight from the best in markets, economics, and geopolitics from our global headquarters in New York City. We are live on Bloomberg Television weekday mornings from six to nine am Eastern. Subscribe to the podcast on Apple, Spotify or anywhere else you listen, and as always on the
Bloomberg Terminal and the Bloomberg Business app. Joining us for a conversation live on Bloomberg TV, the seventy ninth Secretary of the Treasury, Scott Besson secondary best and it's good to see you, sir. A warm congratulations from all of us to you. Quite an arrival from what was it, Little River, South Carolina.
Yes, it's an American success story or in America.
To the office of Alexander Hamildson with some unique experience. How is that going to help you, sir, approach some of the challenges in this economy?
Well, Jonathan, the way I look at it, for my career for thirty five years, I've been sitting outside the room with my ear up against the door, or trying to look over the transum, trying to figure out what policy makers should do or going to do, and how
that would affect the markets. Now I'm inside the room trying to figure out what everybody outside the room expects us to do, how the market's going to react, and what the economic and market implications are a short term but more importantly medium term, and how that's going to affect the underlying economy.
We've got a lot to discuss, So let's start with the debt market. What people expected you to do, maybe was changed some of the issuance for treasury. Something that you'd said back last summer about then Secretary Yellen was that jellin had taken control of monetary policy through treasury issuance. Then you're basically maintaining her plans. Can you help explain that, help us understand where you're coming from.
Sure, So the.
Previous administration shorten some of the duration, and we haven't shortened it further. We've just kept the policy in place, and I believe over the medium term it's going to play out as it becomes clear that everything the President Trump's administration is doing will be disinflationary. We're going to bring down energy costs, We're going to bring down regulation. What DOSEE is doing in terms of cost cutting. And I think once the tax cuts and jawbacks is made permanent,
then we can have a revenue increase cost decrease. And as you said, is the nation's top bond salesman, I got a pretty good story.
So what's the medium term? Help me understand that. What is the medium term? And then once you see all those things, let's say those ambitions become reality, then do you start to think about term again?
The debt.
Sure, but that's that's a long way off, and we're going to see what the market wants. As Lisa noted this morning that the and it's fun to see someone who believes that Fed minutes are exciting that the Fed said that they may stop their balance sheet runoff. So you know, easier for me to extend duration when I'm not competing with another big seller.
So when do you think that time would be end of the year or further down into the administration's term.
It's going to be it's going to be path dependent.
We're still seeing sort of the residual Biden inflation that's still coming through. Uh, And I think as a the market starts to realize what we're doing and inflation starts to drop, then we will we will see. So it's going to be path dependent. That's the eventual goal, but you know, I'm not going to signal it now.
When you mentioned the FED minutes, participants indicated yesterday that one of the problems they had was they were waiting for Trump policies to come into place. Do you think that those policies, when you think of tariffs, potentially deportations, immigration, this can be inflationary. Is it going to hold back the FED from cutting rates?
Well to the extent the team transitory at the FED is still has any credibility.
I would say.
That tariffs, if they have any price adjustments, are the most transitory thing there are, so I don't think that should hold them back very long. And I would point out that, depending on what number you want to use, ten twenty million people who came across the border, we had the worst inflation of forty years when we added ten or twenty million people. So I'm not sure why people are saying that it's inflationary to tell them to go home So when.
You look at team Transitory, do you think the next move for them would be a cut?
Amory.
I have said publicly that I will talk about what the FED has done. When I was a market commentator and investor, I would talk about what.
They should do.
Now I will leave it to them, and sure Powell and I have a weekly breakfast. We saw each other yesterday, and I will convey my thoughts there.
Well, let's talk about what they have done. We can comment on that. You said you're willing to They cut rights one hundred basis points going into the end of last year, and I don't think happened yield to the long end roads. They didn't decline. Do you think feder reserve easing contributed to high long end yields?
Well, Jonathan, I would just say the point of cutting rates is to cut rates. So if they cut rates and rates went up, then there probably was something there. I thought that the rate cut in September. I said it maybe even on your show here, that it was oversized. The market responded. But now we're seeing term premium come back down, so we'll see what happens from here.
Do you think the current rate right now is enough to bring down ten year yields over time just by virtue of being restrictive.
Again, I'm not going to comment on current policies.
I am curious you talk about how you do look at the tenure yield every single day.
I love that. I love that you're the top.
Bond salesman in the United States, and I'm wondering, are you expecting it or hoping it to go down from here? Is that necessary to reach to achieve your three percent growth target?
Well, what's necessary are the underlying conditions. So the underlying conditions that we need for yields to come down.
For growth to go back up.
We've got this affordability crisis in housing, We've got an affordability crisis in the auto payments. So one thing that would be very stimulative. And as Jonathan mentioned earlier, the ten years come down or rates have come down every week since Donald Trump's been president. So if we can continue that for fifty two weeks, that'd be great, and it'd be very it would be a win for the American people, which at the end of the day, that
is our goal. So if we do what we say we're going to do, if we can rein in the budget deficit, if we have non inflationary growth, if we bring down energy prices, and I think now that I have the numbers on the inside, there was a big contributor to this massive inflation was a regulation. I think you said earlier this morning that the what if these
things cause inflation? As am Marie just said some of the policies, Well, what really happened under the previous administration was you created a demand shock with government spending, but it was met by supply constraints as there was more regulation. And Trump one point zero, we created demand shock with tax cuts and it was met by supply side response of less regulation. So you know, the Biden administration created
this inflation. That a demand shock and constraining supply is the ultimate recipe for inflation.
And now you want to count spending the DOGE program, let's talk about it. You've called it one of the most important audits to government ever. You remember the Clinton tried something similar, the National Partnership for Reinventing Government. How different will this be and what kind of cost savings? And even the team thinking about.
Yeah, and John, I can go all the way back.
Given my tenure in the business, I can go all the way back to the eighties to the Grace Commission, and they had some great the ideas, most of them not implemented.
I think that the Clinton.
Gore initiative, I think a lot of that was academics.
So this is.
People on the ground all areas of government, and it's moving quickly, and I really do think it's unfortunate, but it's been lampooned and the attack the way it has. But when it's being attacked like that, it tells me that there are a lot of entrenched interest in terms. When you're moving people's cheese, they don't like it, and it's not their chase, it's the American people's chase.
Well, how about putting some of that cheese back into American people's pocket. How inflation would those five thousand dollars potential doge checks be that the President spoke about yesterday.
Well, I think again that if we are bringing down energy prices, if we are cutting the regulation. So I think that it's a to quote the Vice President during the campaign, I think it's holistic and I think that.
It's all kind of one mosaic.
If you were to inject a lot of money into the economy, because Amory think about this, that we are at this massive deficit to GDP six point seven almost seven percent, So what will be happening on one side, You'll be bringing down that's spending in the economy. So very easy mental model is every three hundred billion is about one percent of GDP.
So every three.
Hundred billion that DOGE is able to save, could you put that back in the economy into people's pockets.
One thing potentially that could happen and people are questioning it is maybe remarking gold. Elon Musk, who's leading DOGE, was talking about maybe going to Fort Knox to make sure those gold reserves are there.
That comes under your purview. Do you have any plans to visit Kentucky?
I don't have any plans. I can tell you that we do an audit every year. I can tell the American people on camera right now that there was a report September thirtieth, twenty twenty four.
All the gold is there.
Any US Senator who wants to come and visit it can arrange a visit through our office.
Gold was your biggest holding when you're a hedge fund manager before you divested to become the Treasury Secretary, So you know the value of where gold is right now versus where it's marked on its balance sheet just north of forty dollars an ounce, it's close to three thousand. Is it under consideration for this administration to revalue gold?
I think that somehow when we were telling about the Sovereign Wealth Fund and I said monetize the balance sheet, I can promise you that's not what I had in mind.
So it's not under consideration, not on the table, that's not what I had in mind.
When you look at the dose savings that you have so far, how much is that going to go to offset some of the tax extensions.
That we see.
What other savings are you looking at that potentially are crucial.
Well, again, they're just getting started. And one of the shocking things to me has been when we talk about waste, fraud and abuse, we all think of what comes out of DC.
We think of some waste and fraud and friction costs.
Because one way to think about this is twenty five percent of the US economy flows through Washington, DC. So if we can cut the friction on that, that's a lot of savings. What I we are discovering now and wate fraud and abuse. There may be much more fraud going on than we thought, and I think you're going to be hearing about that.
Over the coming week.
Can we hear about it now?
I think you're going to be hearing about it on the coming weeks.
What kind of fraud are you thinking about? What kind of fraud have you identified?
Again, i'd refer you to so you're here now, so I've refer it out of you. I'd refer you to some of the statements by Lee Zelden at the EPA.
Okay, well, we can build on that in the weeks to come. I can refer to you some comments from the Washington Post on defense cuts. They're reporting the p Hexseth, the Defense Secretary or the senior leaders of the Pentagon and throughout the US military to develop plans for cutting eight percent from the defense budget in each of the next five years. You're aware of that plan.
I'm in contact with Secretary of HEXITS and we're working very closely. And again, you're not going to jump the gun here on TV, but I think everything's on the table and can things work more efficiently.
When it comes to the defense budget.
We spent more last year on our interest payments than defense. So are you hoping for twenty twenty five to spend more on defense than the interest payments?
Well, it would depend how we got there too.
That does defense spending go down, does the interest bill go down?
We'll see what that calculus is.
Got to focus on tariffs too. Revenue raising is part of that story. Reciprocity, national security. You want fair trade. That we all want fair trade. The President has discussed reciprocal tariffs. He's mentioned the Europeans also offered to drop auto tariffs. Could we start there? Have the Europeans actually made that offer? Can you confirm that?
I haven't seen that, but it's possible. I think that good thing about President Trump's negotiating style is people put things that were or they not on.
The table before on the table very quickly.
So that would be reciprocity and maybe negotiating. But to offset the tax cuts, where's the revenue raising?
So there could be Not everyone is going to give on every point, right, So the Europeans seemingly put forward very quickly auto terrafs, but not every country is going to do that. My view, as I've said before, China is the most imbalanced, unbalanced economy in the history of the world, and they are trying to export their way out of what is a very serious recepsion, and the rest of the world can't do that. They can't dump Chinese goods. They're going to have to rebalance their economy.
So tariffs on Chinese goods went up ten percent, and a lot of that again Mexico, Canada, China. That was in response to the fentanyl crisis.
China is the only one though, that those terrorfts have actually stayed in place.
Is that the opening salvo?
How high do you think Trump wants to go when it comes to Chinese terraffs Well, I'm.
Not going to give away as negotiating hand on TV. I do have my first call with my Chinese counterpart tomorrow morning, so I look forward to a very productive discussion.
What's the first point you want to bring up.
That we want to work together And as we said, a lot of the precursor ingredients from fentanyl originate in China, so we really want.
To put a stop to that very quickly.
Historically, there's been some currency concerns with regards to China as well. In the conversations we had you. Before taking up this post with you, you mentioned that some countries, some currencies aren't undervalued. Is China one of them? Is that something you'd like to remedy.
Yep, Well, Jonathan, what I've said is, make no mistake, the US still has a strong dollar policy, but that does not mean that by laterally other countries can weaken their currencies versus the dollar or manipulate their currencies, but specifically on China, China is a very difficult currency to value because I really think that when we think about the value of the R and B, it's in three different equilibrium. On any academic model, say purchasing power parity, it's cheap.
On the other side, you have one point four billion.
People who are subject to capital controls and they want to get some of their money out of the country. And then you have what I would call the X factor. If you put money into China today, what's your belief that you will get it out in two, three, four years. So it's very difficult to come up with a point value of the currency.
You've talked about the desire to have a strong dollar policy for the United States, but is a strong dollar at odds with the idea of bringing industrial production back to the United States and sort of speaks to some of the concerns about out other countries trying to devalue their currencies.
Well, I think that we will necessarily have a strong dollar if we run good policies, and I think we're going to run good policies if we.
If we cut the trade deficits.
When you think about the trade deficit is a combination of terms of trade, value of the dollar and our own budget deficits. So if we bring down the budget deficit, then I think everyone if we are deregulating, if we are, if we make the tax cuts permanent, if we make the US more business friendly, then the everyone, all the reserve managers in the world, all the private investors are going to want a piece of that, and the dollar will be strong.
But we will be able.
To push back on that through good policies, through productivity, the US productivity. I think that I've been meeting with a lot of the tech leaders lately, and I think we are very close to the cusp of this AI finally coming into the productivity numbers.
Do you think that a strong dollar is necessary in order to offset some of the costs that could be otherwise associated with the tariffs.
Traditional economic theory would tell you that the dollar strengthens on the tariffs, but who knows what we've already seen since the dollar appreciation since November fifth. Markets live in the future, so have we already priced in some of that? And on the other side, what we are trying to do is to get other economies to successfully rebalance.
My conversation tomorrow.
With my and this is really just an introductory conversation, but as we go down the road, the Chinese need to rebalance their economy in favor of consumption, that they are suppressing the consumer in favor of the business community. So as that happens, then they will increase their demand.
Same thing in Europe, you know Mario Drogy.
For any of your viewers who didn't see it, Mario Drogy had a fantastic editorial this weekend in the Financial Times where he said, look, we have put the equivalent of more terrorists on ourselves, more terrorists on ourselves than the US could ever contemplate. So could you get a very strong euro Somehow they had an immaculate deregulation just quickly.
You're having this call with your Chinese counterpart. Will you see him next week at the G twenty Finance Minister's meeting.
I'm not going to Cape Town due to some domestic considerations. I actually think that he's not attending either.
So is that what he's told you?
This is the that we've gotten.
Okay?
So, and again I also believe several of my other counterparts won't be there. I have been speaking and in contact with them regularly, and then I will be seeing them at the Spring IMF World Bank meetings in DC.
I wanted to talk to you about national security as well, and the dollar has certainly got a role to plan on that front. The sanctions policy of the United States as we look back, do you think that's been misused abused?
Excellent question, Jonathan.
That when I came into Treasury, if you think about sort of Treasury is five pieces. There's irs on one side, the men on the other, but the main focus of in the building at Treasury is domestic finance, international finance. That's what I've been doing for my career for thirty five years. I was able to hit the ground running on that, what we call TFI. Terrorism finance is where my biggest learning curve is. So I'm spending a lot of time on that, and I'm reviewing the sanctions policies.
Why do we do what we do? Have they been effective?
Are we running a twenty first century program as opposed to some outdated modalities.
Well, the current sanctions are in place in places like Russia to try to get Puttin to negotiating table. You are intricately involved in these in this deal. You were justin Kiev, you met with President Zelenski. Trump yesterday called Zelensky a dictator without these elections and said that he better move fast or he's not going to have a country left. Does this language make it harder for you to get that minerals deal over the finish line?
Well, look, I think President Zolensky unfortunately escalated and has put some daylight between.
Them, escalating that a lot of his remarks.
In Munich, I thought we're inappropriate. President Zelenski, when I met with him, assured me that he'd be the signing the minerals deal in Munich.
He has not.
And look the real purpose here and I think it's turned into this media circus. The President Trump had a very elegant plan and it was bring the Ukrainians closer to the US.
Let's do this economic deal.
And the even Carl Rove in the Wall Street Journal this morning approves of it that the US, with greater economic interest in Ukraine, provides a security shield.
So the sequencing of.
What was going to happen was bring the Ukrainians closer to the US through economic ties, convince the American people and the American public, get them onside, and then tell the Russians go to the negotiating table with a very fulsome message that if we need to, we will take sanctions up.
Well, what about tapping a Russian frozen assets and three hundred billion dollars? Would you force your European counterparts to not just have them frozen, but actually tap them. Trump talks about repaying the American taxpayer.
Shouldn't Russia be a part of that.
Well, what's happening now is they are being tapped.
So the returns from interest, the returns.
From the freezed asset pile, is going to pay the Europeans. You know, what's very important to understand here is everything the US has done to date, the American people, the American taxpayer, is grants the Europeans roughly half of what they've done are loans, and the runoff from the frozen assets is being used to repay European loans.
If you communicated that to the Europeans, the europe sent with them. What's that If you communicate to the Europeans that you're absent with.
Them, I think Vice President events that are a pretty good job. In Unich.
Do you think they understand that the United States is running a deficit of north of six percent close to say, and that the budget for defense is north of eight hundred billion dollars? Do they think? Do you think they understand the gravity at the moment in the United States the US perspective.
Look, I think that they understand that President Trump during his first term this term, Vice President Vance and the entire security apparatus had told them that many of the countries are deficient in their NATO spending and they need to come up. When I went to Ukraine, you fly into Poland. Poland is spending almost five percent of GDP on defense and look at Poland sitting next to Ukraine. Poland is one of the great economics success stories of
the past thirty years. After China, they've had the fastest growth. So why couldn't Ukraine, with some US capital ingenuity know how and root out some of the corruption do as well as their neighbors done.
If Europe spends more, will it allow Americans to come back on defense spending? Is that the ultimate goal?
The ultimate goal is for the Europeans to come up to where they've said that they are going to and to provide their share of the NATO spending.
You mentioned sanctions, So do you have both on the table ready to go a sanctions ramp up or wind down on Russia depending how these talks go.
I think that'd be a very good characterization.
When it comes to the talks. Trump still thinks he's going to meet with Putin. He said probably by the end of the month. The end of the month is next week. Are you preparing for that.
I'm not going to give away the timetable, but the President is committed to ending this conflict very quickly.
And I will tell you your name, Kiev. I went to a children's hospital that had been bombed. And this was not a children's.
Hospital where you take your child if he or she scrapes like this.
Was see you can imagine I did that trip that you're talking about just a few months ago. You can imagine why they haven't had elections in right, they're living in this martial law.
They are, and it's probably a necessary, probably necessary to move forward with the democratic process.
We've covered a lot of topics. One name that has not come up very much is Elon Musk. Let's finish there. You've had some tremendous colleagues in your experience over your career, including the great investor Standing Drunken Miller. You've worked alongside Donald Trump through the campaign. Can you just describe what it's like to work with someone like Elon Musk, someone as successful an American business Just what's that like day to day?
Yeah, Look, Elon Musk, like stand drunk and Moller like I always compare the great business people to great athletes. They keep their eye on the prize, whether that whether he's the Messy or Michael the Messy or Michael Jordan. He is focused and his energy level is unbelievable and he's gotten to where he has because everything's on the table. There's always this examination of why are we doing it
this way? Why are we doing what we're doing? And most of all, if something's not working, Let's fix it.
You know, Sam Oltman was on Bloomberg TV just two weeks ago and called Elon Muss insecure.
Do you view him as much?
I'm not going to get into the tech magnet the.
Kind of slap best secondly best, and I would say that's wise. He is drawing criticism, though, when you and the administration come out and pick out the various things where money is being wasted on, I think we can all agree that that's a waste of money. When there might be some concern is the way that some people are being laid off in Washington that lacks some dignity? Could you comment on that today?
Look, I think that, uh, there are many fine public servants, and but I think that.
I've been in Washington.
It's three or four weeks now, and there's a real bias towards the status quo. And if you don't move quickly then they then the lobbyists get involved, the entrenched interest, and it's impossible to get anything done. So you know, any anyone who has experienced, uh in financial hardship, the any kind of the mental duress, uh, you know, I'm sorry for them, but that's also what the average American
experiences every day most of us. You know, you all come to work, you want good readings, the you know you uh, you get a performance readout.
You really push forward.
And I can tell you that in Treasury, I have been so impressed with the quality of the permanent staff and I want to get everybody back to the office and a lot of people are on board with that.
When it comes to your prior life, you didn't have a boss. You said it would be like atrophy if you weren't trading financial markets every single day. What is it like now to be in this position where you make decisions that people can trade against what you're doing, and you also have a boss that sits pretty close to you. In terms of the Treasury Department and the West Wing.
Well, look, I only had my own firm for eight years, so I worked with mister Sours, with Stan Druck and Mower and it's a great feedback mechanism. And I think I have the best position in DC. I'm on the White House campus.
We have a great staff. In Treasury.
I can be in the Oval in four minutes, so there's proximity. And again, not like Elon Musk, President Trump is committed to shaking up the status quo. He came in with a mandate and he's moving on it very quickly.
You're a total gentleman, and you've been very gracious with your time. Thanks for being a good friend to this program over the last year, Secretary Besson there of the Treasury Secretary, best and thank you, Sir Canardi Goldberg of TD Writing markets retain a dual focus as the year wears on, economic fundamentals and politics. Trade uncertainty is dominated headlines, but immigration and fiscal policy also matters significantly to the market.
Gannardi joins us now for more. Cannardi, It's good to see you. Let's talk about this bond market. You're to drop in. They're not climbing. That was not the call coming into twenty five from the consensus. Your call is a bit different. What are you looking for, Well.
We're still looking for kind of a first half, second half story. I think the first half is all about trying to figure out Trump to some extent, and trying
to figure out the macro backdrop as well. We have a fairly strong macroeconomy that is on its way to gradually moderating, and then we've got a lot of the uncertainty on trade, on tariffs, on immigration, on all these things, and that's really going to push us towards kind of a second half where we do think, we reassess and rates slowly drift flower over the course of the year.
So right now range bound is people wigh these sort of counterbalances and remain in a fog where do you have clarity yet?
Do you understand Trump?
I'll put it to you this way.
With a lot of my conversations with clients, the conviction level on a scale of one to ten is about a negative two. You know, nobody has any clue as to what's coming next.
And really what we're trying.
To understand is what is the end goal of a lot of these policies. And we're still very much in the thick of it. I mean, it's been a month at this point. It's felt like much longer than that. For the bond market, I can tell you it seems like everything is calmed, but underneath the surface, there's a lot of analysis going on, a lot of people trying to understand what exactly is the angle of these policies. I don't think the market has a good sense of that yet right now.
Where you looked at the meeting minutes yesterday that came out from the last FMC meeting, and they talked about the uncertainty, the policy uncertainty, and said that generally it pointed to upside risks to the inflation outlook. Do agree that when you put the soup together, the risk is to an upside bent and inflation rather than a downside swing in growth.
I think if you look at the data you've seen in the last couple of months, you know the FED is very much painted by that. They do try to look at longer term trends. The last couple of months have been a little firm, although I will say less firm than expected. And if you look at the translation into core PCE, we're still looking for a point twenty five on a month a month reading just next week, so we're not really seeing this massive reacceleration of inflation
that folks were worried about. So I think we're still on a downward trajectory. The issue is it's not downward enough for the Fed. They wanted to be making more progress, and I think that's what's got the body market a little stuck.
It's not lower enough for the Fed, and it's not lower enough for the Treasury Department.
And we're going to be speaking.
With Scott Bessett who talked about how he is focused on the tenure yield. How much control do you think the Treasury has over this? How much will their issuance plans as well as just how they offset some of the spending. How much is that going to really be the main driver for where the tenure is.
I think the focus from this administration is well received by modern markets.
I can tell you that much.
There's a lot of I would say, you know, like of the fact that he is looking at the long end of the Yeld curve and saying, what can we do to ensure that there's ample supply demand. Maybe that means once November comes around, which is when we expect auction sizes.
To increase, maybe they moderate the increases in the long end. Maybe they don't even increase.
Ten twenty and thirty or auction sizes. That's something that's potentially on the table. I doubt that would have been on the table with prior administrations. They would have tried
to raise it in all venues. Here, we're really looking at where is the kind of the optimal issuance point with the with the keen kind of point of let's try not to increase rates further out the curve term premium is already higher, so that's something that you know, the US taxpayer has to be paying for, and they're really trying to minimize constant taxpayers.
That's that's really the Treasury's goal.
What can they do in the short term though, if they're laser focused on bringing down the tenure, I.
Mean, get the budget in order.
I mean, that's really the next big thing, and not.
Send out five thousand dollars checks.
It would be use five thousand dollars checks to pay down the deficit, right, I mean, that would be kind of the best thing that's received by the bond market so far. I mean, if you really want to do this, you know, we're running about a six percent deficit to GDP. Bring that down.
I know there's a lot of efforts to do that.
At the moment. We'll have to see what the results of that are. I don't know if the bond market is fully convinced that lower deficits is the direction we're heading, and to what extent they're going to be lower a.
Seventy dice, but you have. It's a folding rising and that's the change that not many people expected coming into the new Yea.
I love it is talking about in terms of the analysis underneath the hood of all of these potential policies and how they offset each other. And right now the focus is more on what this could mean for a growth head more than say inflation.
Canadia's good to see you as always, appreciate your time, Thank you, sir, Cannada girl. But the i f TD securities on this bond market, all the asym of New Century Advisors joins us. Now for more, Claudia, welcome to the program. I want to get straight to that economic data. Jobless claims it doesn't look like there's a ton of weakness here when you look at the labor market from above, from thirty five thousand feet, any reason for concern at the moment.
So thirty five thousand feet, the labor market still looks really good. Now, clearly we have to pay attention to the layoffs that are happening within the federal government and how that might spread through contractors and other kinds of grants that are held back. But that is at the high level. That's just one corner of the labor market. But I think back to the point chat about this uncertainty. We came into this moment with hiring rates that look
kind of unusual for the amount of layoffs. Like layoffs look really good, But we are an environment that isn't absorbing the workers who are out there looking for jobs. So if we do get into a place of layoffs, then that can be a real problem. It can turn into a problem very quickly. Not a problem now, but it could be.
Claudia has ever been an analog a time and history that you can point to where there was a lot of policy uncertainty and a pretty ballad labor market. It's someone that was kind of in stasis and not expanding and not contracting.
That's tough.
I mean, it is true that when we start into an administration there is going to be a lot of a new administration uncertainty about where the economic policy is going all together.
Right, So we have.
These moments and time and it doesn't have to, you know, really cause a big upset in the labor market. It's more what the policies turn into going forward. So we're in kind of this like holding pattern at the moment, but I wouldn't necessarily say.
This is out out of the.
Normal, Claudia.
I'm wondering as an economist how much you're increasingly looking at the economic data put out by the government versus the economic data put out by corporate executives. And I say this because increasingly what you're seeing in the stock market is corporate earnings are really the driver of pretty much everything across the board. I wonder if that's increasingly on the bond side, and from an economics perspective as well, well, I.
Think it's important to I mean, we need to be looking at all pieces of data. A lot of the government data do a much better job of rolling it all up, giving us the big picture, the trends where we're going as an economy overall. Clearly there are going to be important idiosyncratic at the different the firm levels, the earnings levels, that will drive I say, markets an
important way. So I don't think we should ever be in an either or situation, And there can be times where it's really difficult to match up the two, where you have things going on in sectors that are very different than the economy as a whole CAU.
We talk about what's going on in the job sector at the federal level. If we're seeing a dogification of the federal workforce, what kind of average numbers do you expect to be added every month? Last year is about thirty five thousand on average of federal workforce employees added to the job report.
Right, So at this point it's really hard to get a firm sense of numbers coming out of DOGE and just the reporting. You know, we're getting things very much in piecemeal in terms of the layoffs that have actually happened, the layoffs that are likely to happen. So I think, you know, keeping in perspective, federal government workforce less than two percent of the full government if we had the
full probationary workers. So those two hundred thousand workers that have been targeted, they were all laid off, Like that's a tenth of a percentage point on the unemployment rate. These are small numbers in that big picture. They're incredibly disruptive in the federal government. That could be disruptive for services. But we have to like these We're getting constant headlines
of layoffs and they will add up. It's just a question of how big those really are in reality, and that's just not a known yet and how it spreads, right, this is not just about the federal workforce. It's being targeted. So I think at this point it's it's clearly a negative.
I can tell you the direction that that looks like on the jobs report, but whether it's the kind of numbers that are portending of a recession or a major contractional labor market like that would require a lot of amplification outside of the federal government sector.
On the flip side, how are you taking into consideration what we're seeing on the immigration side with the Trump administration deportations and much stricter border control.
Right, So again this is one where the numbers are going to really matter. I mean in terms of are they really doing the deep are the deportations really adding up in a way that the administration aspires to And they may not be there now, maybe they'll get there, but we you know that a lot of that is going to be potentially destructive to supply side, right, Like we're losing workers that you know that have been a big booster growth coming into this could be a drag
on growth. But again, at this point, the numbers being aspired to for exceed what it looks like are actually the deportations that are happening. So I mean, at the end of the day and the data and what's happened, like the reality matters, and we don't know what the reality is.
Right now, Laudia, I appreciate you re inside. As always, Cordia, Sam that of New Century assizes. This is the Bloomberg Seventans podcast, bringing you the best in markets, economics, antiopolitics. You can watch the show live on Bloomberg TV weekday mornings from six am to nine am Eastern. Subscribe to the podcast on Apple, Spotify, or anywhere else you listen, and as always on the Bloomberg Terminal and the Bloomberg Business Out
Mm hmm