YouSaid · the spoken record

Claudia Sahm

lines on the record: 72
first: 2020-08-14
most recent: 2020-08-14
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“And will protect their elite position. And it's like, yeah, we got to change that because that is not helping us do good in the world.”
2020-08-14 · Masters in Business · Claudia Sahm on Economic Policy (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I became an economist because I believe that economics could do good in the world. And in particular, I became a macroeconomist because I believed economic policy, like the big stuff, could do good. Again, it was there to do good. And something I have grappled with in my career as an economic policy advisor is we don't always do good. Now, I am totally a glass half full, if not overflowing. I have a lot of energy. I do not give up. And I think we can do this. And we definitely do in some cases, but as economics, we got to do more good in the world. And I think for me, that was, you know, I'm a naive person and I love people and I think everyone else should. But, you know, like there are racism, misogynists, and people who are totally closed-minded.”
2020-08-14 · Masters in Business · Claudia Sahm on Economic Policy (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And but in terms of, and it's not your fault, it's also important when you get into a this profession of economics, you're going to see things differently than the more senior people. Like we forget what it's like to be new. We forget how problematic some of our norms are. So you have your eyes open and it's really hard to like balance this. This doesn't feel okay, but I feel like I got to do it to fit in. And when something bad happens, too often I see young economists, and I did this too, blaming themselves. And it's not about them. It's not about the person who's hurt. It's about the person who's hurting them. But like that's a tricky thing. And that's like, you know, pro tip of like working through a career, right? This is not just economics. But if you haven't lived it, how would you possibly know how to react to it?”
2020-08-14 · Masters in Business · Claudia Sahm on Economic Policy (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Not your fault, right? As a new person, no, I'm serious. And actually, right now, like putting it in the context of this recession, people who are early in their career, people who are gradually gradually grad”
2020-08-14 · Masters in Business · Claudia Sahm on Economic Policy (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yep. And I read a lot of journal articles. I mean, economics does not have a culture of writing books. Though our paper dropped in 80 pages, so it's kind of like a little mini book.”
2020-08-14 · Masters in Business · Claudia Sahm on Economic Policy (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“This one is tough. Like, I read a lot, and frankly, I read a lot of Twitter, right? Like I just, I am, what Tyler Cown refers to as an infoor. Like I just love all this stuff flying by me. And that unfortunately means that like that's what I spend a lot of time doing, right? Because I can't read two things at once.”
2020-08-14 · Masters in Business · Claudia Sahm on Economic Policy (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And I try to do that as a mentor. The thing that I learned, and I pushed out this post, is I learned that helping people get better. And that is the absolute first thing to do is important. But if you don't go back and try and figure out how to shut down the harasser, it doesn't stop. And that's a very recent lesson for me. And that's a tough lesson for all of the allies I've had because they just want to help me. And I get, and that's what I needed most, but also there's a systemic problem. We got to fix it. And it'll be the allies that do it, but we got to do it.”
2020-08-14 · Masters in Business · Claudia Sahm on Economic Policy (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Was someone I went to when I just completely melted down in 2011. And it's really special to have people who you know you can go to, they care about you and they will not judge you because I was a total mess. And he helped me get better. He gave me the space. He made sure they didn't fire me.”
2020-08-14 · Masters in Business · Claudia Sahm on Economic Policy (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I know So, I have a lot of them. Sarab Bay Dod was my first economics professor at Dennison. He was my senior thesis advisor. I wouldn't be an economist if he hadn't really pushed me. And I learned economic history from him. Like I never saw that again, history of economic thought. At the University of Michigan, Matthew Shapiro was my advisor. I continue to come to him. And especially recently with advice, I do research with him. He's just really important. You have to have allies. And I need an ally that understood economics. My parents are awesome, but they're like, listen to Matthew. He cares and he understands your world. We do not understand your world. And I will say a big mentor, an ally to me, David Libo was my first section chief at the board, and he is someone who I always felt I could go to.”
2020-08-14 · Masters in Business · Claudia Sahm on Economic Policy (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And I listen to podcasts that are not about economics. A friend pointed me, Kate Bond pointed me to Forever 35. It's about facial products and like what to wear in the pandemic from these two women. And it's like, I need to take a break from economics sometimes, right? And so to me, it's been a great way just to hear people other voices. And I've been really privileged like today to actually be part of those conversations. I can never listen to the ones that I'm on later. But I love the fact.”
2020-08-14 · Masters in Business · Claudia Sahm on Economic Policy (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, I have become an avid podcast listener, right? I didn't think I would because for a long time, I like to read. I loved econ blogs, but they just, they aren't what they used to be. In terms of just not as many voices. So I was like, okay, I'm going to listen to these podcasts. One of my coping mechanisms in this crisis has been go for a long walk every day. And podcasts make a great soundtrack to my long walk. I listen to a very wide range of podcasts. I listen to the indicator. I listen to various podcasts on Bloomberg. I love Joe Weisenthal and Tracy Alloway's podcast. I just, it's so informative. And they're fun, right? And I listen to the Brunigs, right? Matt and Elizabeth Bruni. I mean, this is a very different perspective. I don't always agree with them. It's very...”
2020-08-14 · Masters in Business · Claudia Sahm on Economic Policy (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In 2008, like, how is it possible? Because it was out in the world, out in academia, out in other policy circles. This conversation was happening, this research was happening, and we just totally ignored it.”
2020-08-14 · Masters in Business · Claudia Sahm on Economic Policy (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But all over in the undergrads that I hear from or the people who have been pushed out of the profession, I mean, they make me angry. You read the post? I sound angry. I am. Like this is completely unfair. And so many of them would have been great economists. I know it. Some of them I saw their research getting going. I was so excited and they walked away. And I said, you know what? We don't deserve you. We need you, but we don't deserve you. And like that has to change because until it changes, we are going to continue to give advice that is not aware of, well, how do people of color? How do the less educated? How do the people on the margins of the economy experience a recession? Let's talk about that. Let's do research on that. And it has been ignored and the Federal Reserve has done so much to improve that research. But where was it?”
2020-08-14 · Masters in Business · Claudia Sahm on Economic Policy (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“My hero, and he's like, But Claudia, I never forgave myself because he said after they came down, after they explained it away. Loudly, and I didn't. And I thought, to me, that was a really important lesson. And I have been not with the consensus since this crisis started. I have very loudly said we have the mother of all demand shocks. Like, yes, the pandemic is causing what we, you know, a supply shock, but this is a big one. And I spent a lot of time, and I was told by people who I very much respect an economic policy circles, Claudia, you need to tone it down because you're going to look bad at the other side of this. And I was like, I won't, right? And I didn't back down on the blog post because I know people that are hurt and continue to be hurt. Like, I'm fine. This is nine years ago. When they come in my office, I'm like, yeah, go away. But I know people that have been hurt are being hurt, not just at the Fed.”
2020-08-14 · Masters in Business · Claudia Sahm on Economic Policy (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I found a meeting and I go back in my low points of being at the Fed or just doing economic policy and I reread this one transcript. It was in 2005. Josh Gallen, who is now a very senior economist at the board, he was a junior economist then. He briefed the FOMC. He argued that house prices were overvalued. This was in 2005. Everybody else, there's some exceptions, but basically everyone else at this meeting, especially the ones that were very prominent, like Greenspan, totally shut him down. Now, years later, I've always told Josh, I like he's a hero, he spoke up. Like I tried to speak up, you get like smothered when you try to speak up, but if you're persistent, I'm a persistent person, you can move the needle. Is it very slow moving needle, but it does move? And recently I saw him, and he knows like I've shown you.”
2020-08-14 · Masters in Business · Claudia Sahm on Economic Policy (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, this goes back to my soul searching in the very worst time of the recovery from the Great Recession when I was like, how did we miss this at the Federal Reserve? The crisis, the housing crisis, how did we miss it now in the Great Recession, the recovery? And I got to this point of saying it's because we do not have diversity. Now, diversity comes in a lot of dimensions. And the thing that really nailed it for me is I went back. Again, I was really trying to understand this. Like I was so puzzled. And I'm one of those people that loves to read Fed transcripts from the Federal Open Market Committee meeting. So I started pouring through the transcripts prior to the financial crisis.”
2020-08-14 · Masters in Business · Claudia Sahm on Economic Policy (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Asian, like there's just so many layers of pushing people away that we need because they bring something in an authentic way.”
2020-08-14 · Masters in Business · Claudia Sahm on Economic Policy (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In some cases, they are openly hostile to race, and many of these people, not everyone. I know there could people in economics, right? But too often in too many cases, we have gatekeepers of the profession who are not being inclusive. They're doing the opposite. They're pushing people away. And if that is the case, then you have a big problem. And frankly, like, how do I know it? Just look around. Like there was one black woman economist out of over 400 that I worked with at the Federal Reserve. Over time, there's like two other black people that I know that have worked and have since left. Like, seriously, don't you think? Maybe. And you can see this in top journals. Good luck. Those luck finding a black person, Latinx.”
2020-08-14 · Masters in Business · Claudia Sahm on Economic Policy (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Another one is well, women just don't want to do economics. And it's like, well, why do you think that's the case, right? Like if they show up and you say sexually explicit jokes in class, they might not feel real comfortable. Or if the curriculum doesn't even talk about it, So it just shows that a lot of economists either are completely ignorant of race”
2020-08-14 · Masters in Business · Claudia Sahm on Economic Policy (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It has to do so much, like there is no magic wand, there is no silver bullet. The thing that economics has fallen down on raises frankly a much more serious conversation that we need to have than gender. I mean, rate is just deplorable. And what's surprising about my blog post on many different dimensions is I didn't think it was newsworthy because everything I said we already knew. Now, the economics profession has this amazing ability to explain away its problems. I've done a lot of work speaking on gender and economics. I don't do research in this area, but again, I want to amplify the research. And I have a presentation where I go through and debunk every single one of the criticisms. One of them is women can't do math. This is not true. Plenty of women are math majors.”
2020-08-14 · Masters in Business · Claudia Sahm on Economic Policy (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“A referee said that's inflammatory. And I'm like, no, that's like the real world for these people. Like, you know, so bad, this culture. And then in addition, we had white men jumping into the conversation of Black Lives Matter in a very problematic and frankly racist way.”
2020-08-14 · Masters in Business · Claudia Sahm on Economic Policy (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You can, as a researcher, like I can write about race. I can think about race, but particularly during Black Lives Matter, I soon figured out, you know, my voice is not what we need to hear right now, but I can amplify the voices, particularly of black scholars, because I can retweet. You know, I have a platform on Twitter that a lot of them don't. And to me, I wanted the world and I needed to see their voices because there are economists. There are scholars who think very hard have thought very hard for decades about structural racism and injustice in the US economy, in the global economy. They exist. They have been marginalized. They are told their research is not economics. They are rejected from top journals. I saw someone talking about like they put racial injustice in a paper.”
2020-08-14 · Masters in Business · Claudia Sahm on Economic Policy (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, there's absolutely a domination in the sense that the elite members of the profession, the ones you see on TV, the ones who are in the White House, in the top positions, many, many of them are white men. I like to joke, and I've been to so many seminars, especially these online virtual seminars about COVID.”
2020-08-14 · Masters in Business · Claudia Sahm on Economic Policy (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Because they were heads of the American Economics Association to say, we have a problem. And when Emmanuel killed himself. I said, I need to tell more people because this has to stop.”
2020-08-14 · Masters in Business · Claudia Sahm on Economic Policy (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So when I hear that quote now, and I've heard it in the past, and I agree with it, and I think the direction you're going, but Few weeks ago Emmanuel Fari, who is a 41 year old Brilliant macroeconomist really pushing the boundaries of the field in a very good way and a kind man and a mentor to many, he killed himself. And in the last four years, Marty Weitzman killed himself and Alan Kruger and Bill Sandholm. And these are people who are creative. They were trying to change the field, both in the way we treat people and in the things that we think and explore and the questions and the findings. And to me, that shows the opposite of progress. I mean, those were funerals that nobody should have had to go to. So yes, the quote, and honestly, when Emmanuel's death happened, that was when I took what had been a private reflection that I sent to Janet Yellen and Ben Bernanke.”
2020-08-14 · Masters in Business · Claudia Sahm on Economic Policy (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Do more replication. I mean, it was just astounding to me on so many different levels of this elitism in the profession, pushing back on uncomfortable conversations. And then we actually need a culture of replication. Like, I know that as a policy analyst, I never took a result, a piece of advice into the boardroom that was one paper, especially if it was some paper that was like totally different than every other paper written on the topic. Academia rewards novel, surprising findings. Those are the ones that we absolutely should be checking the math, right? Because I'm not saying they're all wrong, but I mean, Andrew and Phillips researched showed, yeah, you should really do more of this. And we don't economics. And frankly, his paper, their paper was ignored.”
2020-08-14 · Masters in Business · Claudia Sahm on Economic Policy (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And it should have been a finding that we as a profession took really seriously. And instead, from very elite members of the profession, they were received with derision. I mean, they were outright criticized, put down in public. The paper was desperate. In addition to what I talked about in the blog post, Andrew shared with me a correspondence that he received from a very senior person in the profession because he knew I had had problems with this person. And I was furious. But I told Andrew, this man does this, but it is absolutely unacceptable. The paper was rejected at all the top journals. It did finally find a home, and adding injury to insult in one of those top journals, another researcher, much more prominent, published a paper later saying we”
2020-08-14 · Masters in Business · Claudia Sahm on Economic Policy (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We can get their main result. They weren't even trying to replicate all the results. They just wanted the main takeaway empirical result, the finding. And they did this in a way. Andrew Kang was a colleague of mine for years at the Federal Reserve. He is an absolutely industrious person, not as fire as me. Like he's more soft spoken. completely rolled up his sleeves. He had an army practically of research assistants. He was also in the macro forecasting section with me. And they spent hundreds of hours on this project. They were so careful. Like there were no cutting corners. There was no playing fast and loose. They wanted to be able to replicate. They put a lot of time into it.”
2020-08-14 · Masters in Business · Claudia Sahm on Economic Policy (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It says a lot of things about the field of research. One that I didn't touch on in my blog post is it shows that we don't have a culture of going back and checking each other's work, right? And there was pushback, and I'll come back to this, about the paper. It wasn't like they went and did like a news study. You know, like I work in consumer spending. I have written so many papers showing falsification of a basic principle of consumer spending models, as has like hundreds of other people, right? So it's not like someone's checking my work where I'm not checking Jonathan Parker's work. We're just doing different studies. What this paper by Andrew Cheng and Philip Lee did is they said, okay, let's go to the top journals and let's just see.”
2020-08-14 · Masters in Business · Claudia Sahm on Economic Policy (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I take the risk of speaking out. So I don't know, but I was used to this and I wasn't surprised and honestly if I hadn't been a Fed forecaster, if I hadn't spent a year at CEA, where finally early in 2016 things were wobbly, right? And I actually at the event tried to give the credit off to Jason Furman, who then said, oh, the five, this is more like Doug Elmendorf. And then Christie's like, you have to stop. Like, this is you. Anyway, so it's an interesting experience. I'm not really. It's just a peculiarity of the Fed. And what bothers me the most about it is we knew. Like the Fed knew for a long time. And what happened is when I shared it with the world, the world didn't know.”
2020-08-14 · Masters in Business · Claudia Sahm on Economic Policy (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And he was like, so this spreadsheet, she said it was this massive spreadsheet. Seriously, this rule is so simple. And I looked at him and I said, well, I pulled all the real-time data, which means that I looked at all the data as people saw it at that time, which is more complicated. And frankly, this man who I truly think is an amazing economist, he works on the financial side of the Fed. I work on the real side. If I had asked him to do the real-time analysis, it would have taken him a long time, right? But those are the kind of like, oh, this is so simple. And it wasn't saying that I didn't deserve it so much as we all deserved it. Like the whole staff and like the staff from years before. And, you know, like as with Twitter, I...”
2020-08-14 · Masters in Business · Claudia Sahm on Economic Policy (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I just had people that were really clear and not in the mean way, but there's, I don't know, the board is a very interesting place. There are times, and the summer was an example of many, the things that I know about the macroeconomy, I learned at the Fed. Like it's the board, right? Where this kind of brain that passes along macro. That meant that when I spoke out, and this had happened on Twitter, so I knew this was an issue. It's like, well, it's not fair. You get the credit because you're speaking out and you learned it from everybody. And I tried always be cognizant of that and give credit where credit is due. Part of where credit is due is with me. Like I'm the one that spent weekends with this spreadsheet. I had someone contact me after a friend at the Fed, contact me after.”
2020-08-14 · Masters in Business · Claudia Sahm on Economic Policy (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, when I saw that article and I was thrilled, Kate Davidson has been such a booster of my career. So the response to that, well, even my response when I saw the headline is I was like, if you ask Federal Reserve Staff economists, I would not be the name that they would bring out, right? And I knew that. And I know it because, you know, months before is when the Sam rule was born and, you know, there had been some attention to it.”
2020-08-14 · Masters in Business · Claudia Sahm on Economic Policy (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'm so uncomfortable with the Psalm rule thing. And she looked at me and she's like, Claudia, you have got to own. Owning it actually meant I had to defend it, right? Because again, this principle is there. And it was great and it was important for me to understand like the intellectual history of it, but like I already did anyways, but I am thrilled. And I always tell the people that are like, oh, well, we knew this and I was like, but. If everybody in the world knew it, it wouldn't be in the Bloomberg terminals, in Haver, in Fred, with my name. So maybe I wasn't like the person who thought the big thought thing, I did not think the big thought, and yet I got it out to the world. And to me, that's important. And I've spent a lot of time with Congress trying to help them understand why this is such a good thing to do.”
2020-08-14 · Masters in Business · Claudia Sahm on Economic Policy (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“New job, they will pay for that in terms of their careers, and their families will pay for it for a very long time. So to me, it's a widely followed statistic. It makes a lot of sense. It's a Federal Reserve. They also use things called regime switching factor models. I am not taking that to Congress. Like, this is not what you want to have money. But at the Federal Reserve, I mean, you ought to use everything under the sun to understand the macroeconomy. You have to have a simple rule if you want to put fiscal policy on autopilot. So to me, it was a great rule in my chapter. It is called a recession indicator when I showed up at the launch event for the book and they started calling the SOM rule. I was very uncomfortable. And to the point that after the event, I went and talked to Christy Romer and wanted to talk to her about some fiscal stimulus. She was one of the main panelists.”
2020-08-14 · Masters in Business · Claudia Sahm on Economic Policy (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So three tenths was the rule. It makes sense for the Fed because monetary policy wants to get ahead of the game, if it can, because it often is believed that it acts with a lag. You know, if you're lowering interest rates, and frankly, if they cut a quarter point and isn't actually a recession, like they'll pat themselves on the back and it's not like taxpayers have just lost $300 billion of their money, quote unquote. I had a different goal because mine was about what Congress does. And so I found a rule that always triggered within the first few months of a reception. And I also believe that the indicator I use is such a good one because it is the reason that we hate recessions and we fight back. It is people losing their jobs. Those people, especially in a recession, especially if it takes a while to get an”
2020-08-14 · Masters in Business · Claudia Sahm on Economic Policy (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Reserve economists know people on Wall Street know that a small increase in the unemployment rate is a bad sign. Now, I wanted to really understand when it's accurate and when it's in a recession. The Federal Reserve has a rule of thumb, which I did check after they called this the SOM rule. I asked one of my former bosses, I'm like, did I scoop the board's rule? Like, I do not want to, because we'll rename it. It'll be the Fed rule, right? And he said no. The internal rules of Fed was a three-tenths increase in the unemployment rate. And that happens ahead of recessions. And I know one time in 2003, because I tried everything under the sun when I came up with my rule, that it triggered, and it was a false positive, right? Because that small increase happened in that jobless recovery. It didn't end up being considered a recession.”
2020-08-14 · Masters in Business · Claudia Sahm on Economic Policy (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So it's just an empirical regularity, right? I spent a lot of time with a spreadsheet over weekends. Again, this was in part to do my proposal of automatic payments to people, but you got to know when to send out hundreds of billions of dollars, right? You don't particularly want to mess that up. And I knew, and this is a principle that”
2020-08-14 · Masters in Business · Claudia Sahm on Economic Policy (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's right. In a wonky world, they call this dynamic scoring, where congressional budget office would take into account the feedback. In this case, relief has positive feedback effects. Definitely not positive. Now, right now, the Congressional Budget Office can only do that kind of analysis for changes in taxes. This is just something Congress decided. So, you know, we can't run this through and expect to get back a smaller score. I have to make the argument and others have that we know it will help the economy. And if we help the economy right now, it is a down payment on the next few years being a lot better than they look like they're headed to be.”
2020-08-14 · Masters in Business · Claudia Sahm on Economic Policy (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And a lot of forecasters think this is going to take a long time, right? So the phase down of those benefits is going to happen slowly, and that puts the big price tag on. The CBO, the Congressional Budget Office doesn't do the feedback effect. I think in the end it would really cost taxpayers less than $2 trillion because we get the economy going faster. But at the end of the day, that's one reason it's big ticket. One more I'll say that I think is really important.”
2020-08-14 · Masters in Business · Claudia Sahm on Economic Policy (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Goes really fast. So yay, that is good. I want to see the unemployment benefits continue just like I said, tie them to the economy, keep them where they are right now, especially the $600 is so big because when the CARES Act was passed, we were in a pandemic. We did not expect to be in a pandemic now, but we are. Now, I know from having, I've been doing a lot of work with a lot of different offices and members in Congress. This is why I left the Fed. Couldn't do that when I was there. I spent Mother's Day weekend putting together a cost estimate for the unemployment insurance, the enhancement benefits, tying to the unemployment rate, doing forecast. I mean, there's something I learned how to do at the Fed. There are not a lot of people that know how to do this. And I came out with an estimate that was about, it was a little over $2 trillion. And the expense part of that is congressional budget office.”
2020-08-14 · Masters in Business · Claudia Sahm on Economic Policy (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I want Congress to pass a new relief package that is between four and six trillion dollars. I am not expecting to get that. I truly believe in my expert opinion that they need to go big again. And they need to do what worked. So I just want Treasury to just push the button again and send out those checks. We would have, for people who have direct deposits, they would have that money within a week of Congress approving it because the heavy lifting of putting together a file of who gets a check, where's their bank account, that file exists. So if you do it exactly like you did last time,”
2020-08-14 · Masters in Business · Claudia Sahm on Economic Policy (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Enhanced benefits, and in that case, it was the extended durations, being able to stay on longer than 26 weeks, it showed that it allowed people the time to go get a job again that was commensurate with their skills. And that was particularly important for people in disadvantaged groups, so people of color, the less educated and women. So we don't want people to go back too fast because they'll get in jobs that aren't the right jobs for them. And right now, oh my goodness, a lot of these jobs are not safe. So we want to make sure that we don't kill people, right? So the $600 right now makes a lot of sense.”
2020-08-14 · Masters in Business · Claudia Sahm on Economic Policy (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So at this point, there are various research studies. And this is coming from academics. This is coming from policy analysts. I've done work in this space. Also, that money, that support is mattering and it is not holding back the economy. Now, there will be a point, in my expert opinion, as the unemployment rate comes down and jobs become more plentiful that we should think hard about are we paying are we not paying are we giving people more money than they normally would have gotten a very important piece out of a study i saw yesterday i'm sorry i'm not going to attribute it correctly but they showed that in past recessions what”
2020-08-14 · Masters in Business · Claudia Sahm on Economic Policy (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There's been a lot of discussion that that extra money is holding people back from going back to work. I know small business owners, even in my own family, who have had a difficult time rehiring workers to do work in service industry jobs because they're like, well, why should I go back? I'm getting more every week than I would doing your job. And that is legitimate. And yet for many, many workers the problem is their employers don't need them back because nobody's in the store or not enough. And so like that extra money, the unemployer is spending it, right? And so it is pumping demand in the economy that needs it. And it is going away.”
2020-08-14 · Masters in Business · Claudia Sahm on Economic Policy (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'm not saying they were the most important. Like the aid that went to the most hurt, like the unemployed, like we have to help the people who are hurting the most. The thing is in March, we didn't know who was all going to get hurt. Like the American people were really scared. So it helped. And one last thing about the $600.”
2020-08-14 · Masters in Business · Claudia Sahm on Economic Policy (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And the Treasury did things that sped up the delivery relative to 2008. And, I mean, they set up a website where you could go and put your payment information in if you hadn't filed taxes. Now, it was not perfect. Some people got checks that didn't need them. I mean, honestly, well over 80% of the U.S. population, like not even adults, but the population got some money from those rebates. That is just like, wow. Anyways, and the thing is, is they got it out fast. Like the rebates were, in my opinion, the rebates were the best administered piece of the entire CARES Act.”
2020-08-14 · Masters in Business · Claudia Sahm on Economic Policy (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Fast, the rebates. I mean, honestly, the rebates were better than what I had proposed in my chapter because I didn't think it was possible. They are huge. They are twice. And I think they should be. I'm not saying this was a bad thing. that went out in these direct payments is like twice in generosity what happened in 2008 and in addition the eligibility is expanded basically anybody with a social security number has a claim on those checks”
2020-08-14 · Masters in Business · Claudia Sahm on Economic Policy (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So I did not sleep the night of the vote in the Senate until they passed it, which I think meant I stayed up until like 1 a.m. or something the next day. And the reason is by the time it got to the Senate, I knew this was really good for families and the unemployed. I mean, frankly, I was shocked that the $600 a week made it through, and it almost didn't. Like the Senate Republicans, there was a group of them that woke up and are like, that is a lot of money, right? And so especially given what the base benefits to the unemployed would be. Now, as a macroeconomist, so setting aside how I feel about families and the unemployed, as a macroeconomist, this was huge because they passed it in March. I mean, it took longer than the Fed, but my goodness for Congress, they really moved, right?”
2020-08-14 · Masters in Business · Claudia Sahm on Economic Policy (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Hard right now, like last week, when the extra $600 a week to the unemployed expired, That is going to hurt so many families this year. And that program should have been and could have been on autopilot. And it was. the fallout.”
2020-08-14 · Masters in Business · Claudia Sahm on Economic Policy (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source