FOMC votes to reduce the Fed funds rate by 25bps with one dissent (Stephen Miran, on loan from CEA), who argued for 50 bps decline.
Source: Federal Reserve Board, 9/17/2025.
I put in a question mark, but really, there’s no doubt who is at the low end for the appropriate policy rate.
This is despite the fact that Miran believes (in line with the Troika forecast) in much faster growth:
Source: Federal Reserve Board, 9/17/2025.
The top end (one observation in 2026, 202y7) growth rates are slightly below the y/y growth rates listed in the Troika forecast. So, once again, Miran/Administration are out-of-step, forecast-wise.
Overall, you can see Miran’s position:
Source: Federal Reserve Board, 9/17/2025.
In general, Miran holds pretty funny views relative to others — with GDP growth much faster and inflation lower. I guess he’s still holding out for that supply-side miracle.
well trump did promise 2% mortgage rates. there is still work to be done to grind down to that level.
The median year-end jobless rate projection does not anticipate a recession, based on the Sahm Rule. Given that the median estimate for 2026 is lowered than for 2025, the Committee seems to think we’ll squeak by without a recession, but only just.
The year-end pace deflator projections anticipate sharp rise in inflation the rest of this year. Next year’s projections are lower than for this year, but higher than in the June SEP. Rub the deflator estimates against the fed funds estimate and you get positive real rates all the way out the forecast period. Again, no recession. However, the real funds rate is expected to end this year and next below the longer-term average of 1%. In other words, the Committee anticipates easy rate policy into 2027, while inflation runs above target. In June, the same math showed a slightly restrictive rate stance in 2026, so presumably into early 2027.
Summing up, the FOMC has shifted from expecting to lean against inflation in June to today’s expectation of leaning against recession even though the median jobless rate and inflation projections are unchanged from June and the median GDP projection is 0.2% higher this year and next, 0.1% higher in 2027, relative to the June SEP.
I can see only two possible explanations for this shift. One is that the Committee has extraordinary confidence in its ability to head off recession that would occur if the Fed doesn’t act, a recession which the Committee did not foresee in June.
The other explanation is that the Committee has bent to pressure from the felon-in-chief. Ever-so-slightly, but evident in the SEP.
It’s pretty amusing how Trump and his sycophant loyalists proclaim the best-est, hottest economy EVAR — GDP to the moon — and simultaneously that the Fed needs to cut rates drastically now, now now OMG.
It says something when Dr. Chinn can easily pick out Miran’s positions on the economic projections table. So now we have a politicized Fed board the same way we have a politicized Supreme Court. You know what the votes are going to be before they even make them.
It must be an interesting board meeting where you have one Fed member, Miran, who still keeps his job at the White House working for Trump and another Fed member who Miran’s boss is trying to fire. It might be a bit tense.
I’m curious as to Miran’s pay situation. Collecting both checks? Half and half? Dollar-a-year man?
Powell has told reporters that it is appropriate for Fed rate policy to move closer to neutral, but not to return all the way to neutral. The Atlanta Fed’s Taylor rule utility showed rate policy AT neutral even before the Fed cut rates today.
I’m sure the staff has their own ways of assessing the stance of rate policy, but Powell’s statement, along with the year-end funds rate projection in the SEP, suggests that the FOMC view of neutral is about 100 basis points lower than neutral as arrived at by the Atlanta Fed’s Taylor rule utility.
Similarly, the longer-term SEP estimates of inflation and the funds rate suggest that a real funds rate of 1% is neutral, while the year-end 2025 inflationand funds rate projections show a real funds rate of 0.5%. According to both the Taylor ryland the SEP, the Fed is running easy rate policy and will continue to do so for some time. Powell says policy is, and will remain, restrictive. I’m baffled. (Apologies to baffled. I’m Macroduck, but I feel baffled.)
I notice that FRED series GASREGW was priced on the weekly report at $3.125/gal on 8/18/2025 and at $3.168 on the weekly report on 9/15/2025. This is an increase of about 1.4%. Observing monthly data seasonally adjusted and using the first two weeks of September as a proxy for the end of month price, the monthly increase is significantly more than 1.4%.
Since gasoline prices are a significant contributor to energy inflation, I wonder if FRED series CPIENGSL (energy) will help keep the monthly CPI headline M/M percent change in the 0.4% range or even increase the M/M % to 0.5%.
Off topic – making extra-judicial murder routine:
https://www.military.com/daily-news/2025/09/16/trump-says-us-forces-sank-third-suspected-drug-boat-off-venezuela.html
The felon-in-chief now claims to have ordered the murder of three boatloads of Venezuelans. Well, maybe Venezuelans. We don’t actually bother to find out who is on the boats, or what.
Neither the “beyond a reasonable doubt ” nor the “preponderance of evidence” nor even the “reasonable suspicion” standard is applied. ‘Cause murderers don’t have standards. Don’t need ’em.
Off topic – Department of Justice (sic) deletes it’s own study showing the majority of domestic terrorism is committed by right-wingers:
https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/doj-deletes-own-study-website-032537612.html
Just another case of hiding facts that don’t satisfy those in power.
OK, I’ll stop now. For a while.
Okay, can we call it full on fascism now?
Today FCC commissioner Brendan Carr threatened ABC saying “We can do this the easy way or the hard way. These companies can find ways to change conduct and take actions on Kimmel, or there’s going to be additional work for the FCC ahead. Broadcasters, including ABC, have a license granted by us at the FCC, and that comes with it an obligation to operate in the public interest.”
“In the public interest” means in a way that the Trump administration approves. Under threat of losing their license for offending dictator Trump, ABC pulled Kimmel off the air.
And it wasn’t for anything particularly offensive or advocating violence or even saying anything about Kirk himself. It was for suggesting that the shooter could be one of their own. That’s it. That gets you censored by the government these days.
We are only 100 days into a 4-year reign and already we have the US government deciding what can and cannot be said about Trump and his followers in public. This is the Victor Orban fascist play book in which he took gradual control over the media.
The latest Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) decision to cut the Fed funds rate by 25 basis points highlights the delicate balance between economic growth and inflation expectations. While most members agreed on the moderate cut, Stephen Miran’s push for a deeper 50-bps reduction—and his more optimistic growth forecast—shows how differing economic models can shape policy debates.
For readers tracking how monetary policy impacts markets and technology investments, https://matoketcs.com delivers timely technology and news updates that help decode these shifts. Financial policy changes like this can ripple through everything from startup funding to fintech innovations.
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I was less than generous to Kimmel saying he implied that the shooter could be one of their own, which he did not do. This is the actual quote:
“We hit some new lows over the weekend with the MAGA gang trying to characterize this kid who killed Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them”
This is literally true. Just minutes after the shooting MAGA did go crazy blaming it on “the left”, communists, transgender people, etc with literally no evidence. They still don’t know for sure. So it is now a crime to report on actual behavior of actual MAGA folks.
This is the Reichstag Fire for the Trump administration. They are using this incident to create panic and an excuse for suspension of civil rights. That’s how they got the Enabling Act of 1933. This is a perilous time.
We may find out at the mid-terms how far along the road to Krystalnacht we’ve gone. If removing balloting stations from Democratic neighborhoods, outlawing mail-in ballots and the like are enough to keep Congress in the hands of the GOP, then no need to go further. If the felon-in-chief’s ability to dictate to Congress is threatened at the polls, then the polls become just another left-wing radical threat to our homeland.
I will say it again when the trimmed mean is over 3% and is not on a downward trend then you do not cut rates particularly when fiscal policy is clearly expansionary
From Trump’s petition to the US Supreme Court to fire Lisa Cook:
“But so long as the President identifies a cause, the determination of “some cause relating to the conduct, ability, fitness, or competence of the officer” is within the President’s unreviewable discretion.”
Unreviewable! No due process. Unrestricted power. In other words no cause at all. Just the president’s whim.
We are soon to find out if the Supreme Court has anointed Trump king.
So the case is only nominally about Governor Cook’s fitness for office. The real issue that the Justice Department has put before the Court is whether not only presidential crimes, but any presidential action at all, can be reviewed by the courts.
Remember, in another court filing Stevie Miller has assrrted to the Supremes that the courts and Congress are subordinate to the executive branch. Just like every other grab for wealth or power or genitalia, the felon-in-chief’s grab for absolute governmental authority comes as a pattern of repeated claims. He claims power in court filings, knowing that any gain – and the Court has handed him several – can be used to generate claims for additional power. Grab, grab, grab.
Trump today: “When you have a network and you have evening shows and all they do is hit Trump, that’s all they do — that license, they’re not allowed to do that.”
1939: Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels today ended the professional careers of five “Aryan” actors and cabaret announcers by expelling them from the Reich’s Chamber of Culture on the grounds that “in their public appearances they displayed a lack of any positive attitude toward National Socialism and therewith caused grave annoyance in public and especially to party comrades.”
“What amused the public most, however, and presumably roiled the National Socialist authorities most—although Dr. Goebbels does not mention it—is that they deftly, but unmistakably, caricatured some gestures, poses and physical characteristics of National Socialist leaders—sometimes with bon mots that made the rounds of the country.”
Have you ever wondered what you would have done if you were in Germany in the 1930s? Wondered “how did they let it happen?”