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

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“Stop the fiscal relief, and in fact, they cut back on government spending that had a lot of damage the economy. Our last recovery was very long, but that's actually a bad sign in some ways because it took us so long to get the unemployment rate down. And that was the fiscal policy stepped away. And frankly, monetary policy did not step up enough in the recovery. Like they didn't save Main Street. They saved Wall Street. There were political existential risks to the Fed that are why they justified, at least internally, or in my impression, like not going all in on Main Street, but it hurt people, right? So I knew the Fed really can't do this. In some ways, they really shouldn't. But the Congress not only can, but they have to. And that is what has been so.”
2020-08-14 · Masters in Business · Claudia Sahm on Economic Policy (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Economists don't have, but that's what I put into my chapter, and in addition, I said we know the 2008 in particular worked really well. Like that's the way to do it. And then the add-on was me thinking about, well, how would we do that automatically? And the reason that I had it automatic and I had also my proposal in a severe recession, not every recession is severe, but inner severe recession, those payments would happen automatically on a repeated basis until the unemployment rate came down. And that was born out of a very painful experience because I have a very emotional reaction to the macroeconomy. It came from a painful experience in 2012 when the payroll tax cut stopped. And there wasn't anything else that went to a large number of families. The rate was still high. So I knew from fiscal policy that they stepped away.”
2020-08-14 · Masters in Business · Claudia Sahm on Economic Policy (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Help you a lot in terms of saying Congress, the president saying we help the American people. So I took my forecasting expertise, my research, knowledge, and the research knowledge from a lot of other people who work in this space. One of the things at the board is you don't put your forecast together. You don't walk into the boardroom and say, I think this is the right thing to do or this is the right way to think about the economy. And here's my research paper, right? Like you come in with, here's my paper, here's three other papers, here's how they agree, here's how they disagree. And so these were, again, skills that...”
2020-08-14 · Masters in Business · Claudia Sahm on Economic Policy (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Research and ran surveys on the 2008 tax rebates, the 2009 and 10 making work pay tax credit, and the 2011 and 2012 payroll tax cut. Fast forward to last year, I contributed to a volume called Recession Ready that the Hamilton Project of Brookings and Equitable Growth where I now work oversaw the volume I had a chapter on individual payments that would happen automatically in a recession. From my expertise said it's got to be big direct payments to households. This little dibby-dabby changing withholding, this is not a good way to fight a recession. It doesn't help families fast enough and they don't even know it happens. Like stealth stimulus, like I don't know much about politics, but I know enough to know that probably won't.”
2020-08-14 · Masters in Business · Claudia Sahm on Economic Policy (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Monetary policy, they work around the edges. They need to know what we think is happening in the economy. And part of that is what is Congress doing. And so not only did I follow the data in real time, I would update my forecast as the data came in. This is a very unique expertise and experience for a macroeconomist to have. Academics do not do this, right? People at the board do and I learn very well. So in addition to that, I started a research program with Matthew Shapiro, who was my advisor at Michigan, and Joel Slimrod, who's also a professor there. They had a prior research program studying the 1992 changes in tax withholding, the 2001 rebates. They had me join this research program of theirs in 2008.”
2020-08-14 · Masters in Business · Claudia Sahm on Economic Policy (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, I have done a lot of work thinking about how 2020 compares to 2008. And the reason for that is I had a very unique experience at the board in terms of understanding what happened in 2008 and the years after that. It may encounter intuitive. So I covered consumer spending at the Federal Reserve. didn't advise on monetary policy. What my job was to do was say, okay, what's going to happen? What is happening for families and their spending in the economy to do that during the crisis and during the recovery, I had to understand and have an opinion, expert opinion, on what is fiscal relief doing or fiscal stimulus doing in the economy. Because then the board in the”
2020-08-14 · Masters in Business · Claudia Sahm on Economic Policy (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Like you wouldn't have seen this in an economic seminar. The other thing that Brad does on Twitter, which is very rare, is that he engages with people. Like he will reply to tweets. I looked once in Paul Krugman's Twitter feed, and Paul does so much in terms of communicating economics and pushing us to think and pushing a broader audience. He never replies to tweets, like never. So I like Brad that he engages. Like, I like to engage. So that to me is like econ Twitter can be a special place, but it's hard if it's a lecture and not a conversation.”
2020-08-14 · Masters in Business · Claudia Sahm on Economic Policy (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There are two things that I really like about Brad DeLong on Twitter. Like, I like him off Twitter. I've learned a lot from him. One, he is an economic, well, he has a good grounding in economic history. That's not the only thing he works on. He does a lot in macro space too. His blog, I mean, he was like live tweeting World War II. I mean, like, it would have, it showed a side of him that was like not like...”
2020-08-14 · Masters in Business · Claudia Sahm on Economic Policy (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I love the board. I understand much better than I did in the beginning why what I was doing could be problematic. And I never, never wanted to be the person who brought down the Fed, right? Or cause immense stress. I was just having fun. And like I said, I was trying to learn from people who weren't like anybody else that was in the building.”
2020-08-14 · Masters in Business · Claudia Sahm on Economic Policy (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, when he became chair, I thought, oh, Twitter's going to be okay. Yeah, that was wrong. So I got in trouble two more times because Powell read one of my tweets and asked about it, and he shouldn't be learning anything from my tweets. So I was told. And twice I got in trouble for linking to the distributional financial accounts on the board's website because they didn't want attention drawn to it. And I was always like, you know, the board...”
2020-08-14 · Masters in Business · Claudia Sahm on Economic Policy (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, no, and when my last year at the Fed, and I really thought because Powell like loves Twitter, right? When he was a brand new governor, I was in his office with another economist. He wanted to understand like labor markets, superstar effects. We went and talked to him. At the end of the meeting, he looked at me and he's like, Clia, you had a really big day. And I'm like, well, duh, I'm here, you know, briefing a governor. And he's like, Noah Smith retweeted you on Twitter. I know no. So I was like. You're on Twitter and you follow Noah, and you are on Twitter during the day, right? So I was just blown away. That's hilarious.”
2020-08-14 · Masters in Business · Claudia Sahm on Economic Policy (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, and it was bad. And I got called to an off-site coffee that was basically like, what is wrong with you? You are the only staff economist talking about economics on Twitter. And the reward for that is I had all of public, if not all. I had Michelle Smith and several other public affairs people following me on Twitter. When I would do something that they felt was a misstep, even I've never broke like a federal, like I never talked about information that wasn't public, like forecast information. But I would get within a half an hour a call from my division director or via my boss saying you can't do that. You got to, you know. And so there was this aspect of surveillance, which I get like Michelle Smith, public affairs at the board, has such a hard job. And every once in a while, I stepped in their lane. I never meant to.”
2020-08-14 · Masters in Business · Claudia Sahm on Economic Policy (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No one at the board saw that as an upside, right? And I was a walking downside risk within a very short time of being on Twitter. I was very good about it. I don't talk about monetary policy, but I would link to things on the board's website, like Bernanke gave us speech and so I got found out by public affairs because I was driving traffic to the board's website.”
2020-08-14 · Masters in Business · Claudia Sahm on Economic Policy (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That moment, and then reflecting back. Remember, I showed up in the summer of 2007. Reflecting back, I was like, how did we miss this? Right? Like there's all these people. And that was a moment where I said, okay, maybe it's because we don't have enough diverse voices. We're not connected enough to reality. And, well, Twitter's got a lot of diverse voices, right? So I went on to econ Twitter. I like to be a parent to anyone who knows me. I like to talk to people. I like people. I like people that are a little prickly. I mean, I'm a macroeconomist, right? So I went there to hear from people who don't, they're not inside the building. And frankly, it's probably a good idea. Like some of them would be absolutely horrible macro forecasters at the board. But that was for me very important now. Was my upside?”
2020-08-14 · Masters in Business · Claudia Sahm on Economic Policy (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So I joined the platforms, Twitter, the blogging came later, my gateway quote unquote drug to economic social media was commenting on economic blogs like marginal revolution, money illusion. That was really how I dipped my toe in the water there. Twitter, I spent time on it. The reason I went to Twitter was because after I'd had some difficult periods at the board and also was trying to figure out how are all these smart, caring colleagues, like how are we missing it that the recovery from the Great Recession is going to be really slow, right? Like our staff forecast was consistently too strong and I and there were others were consistently saying there is no way we have families that are absolutely decimated from this recession. And so for me,”
2020-08-14 · Masters in Business · Claudia Sahm on Economic Policy (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That didn't mean I knew anything about being a manager. They don't teach us that in the PhD doctoral programs, and often they teach us what not to do as a manager. So that was a really hard year. That was like my imposter syndrome year on par with that year in 2008 when I was like, oh my gosh, I'm supposed to forecast US economy in crisis. So it was a very different time and I handled it way better than 2008. But it's a tricky job and it's one where the board helps us do a good job now. But if you don't do a good job, you can not only have a team that's not effective at doing policy work, you can really damage people. And we don't want to do that because that doesn't help anybody.”
2020-08-14 · Masters in Business · Claudia Sahm on Economic Policy (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Manager boot camp. It was like three months every other week, three hours. And that was really good. And they brought in external consultants. I learned a lot from that. I learned a lot from my team, especially the research assistants in how to be a good manager. Now, it won't surprise me, and this isn't just at the board, you get promoted because you're good at doing the job you started with. Like I was, I made Section Chief because I'm a very good economist and I could lead my team on their economic policy work.”
2020-08-14 · Masters in Business · Claudia Sahm on Economic Policy (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, in my last two years at the Federal Reserve, I was a section chief for a research section in the Division of Consumer and Community Affairs. There were a lot of things you They were all really impressive. The division focuses on low and moderate income families and communities. So they were from the very beginning ahead of the game in terms of thinking about diversity and inclusion and racial injustice and educational disparities and rural versus urban. So that was a really good experience for me. Back to what it means to be a section chief. So it is widely known that the section chief is the worst job or the hardest job and the only one that comes close is being a division director. So right? That's the very top of the house and the section chief is the first manager job. The board now joined the board, but the board now has very intensive management training for section chiefs or anyone who starts as a group manager, which is like one level down. So anyone who's supervising goes to a”
2020-08-14 · Masters in Business · Claudia Sahm on Economic Policy (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Could be, frankly, should be. And I'll end this piece with just a funny story in how the journey to the CE started back in undergraduate. So I went to Dennison University, a liberal arts college, and in my intermediate macro class, Dick Lucier taught the class. And part of the class was us being like we were economists at the Council of Economic Advisors. We had to cut things out of the newspaper and do analysis. And then he roleplayed being the president. We had to do presentations. I got to when he was at the Council of Economic Advisors, he came to visit in DC and I got to take him on a tour of the Oval Office. So to me, it was just this really special connection from how I fell in love with economics as an undergraduate. And then when I got to contribute as an economist to the policy world.”
2020-08-14 · Masters in Business · Claudia Sahm on Economic Policy (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It was cricket. Like nobody was going to come ask me what I thought about Brexit. We have a whole team of international economists. So it was a really interesting experience. I'm glad I did it. It really focused my mind on what economic policy”
2020-08-14 · Masters in Business · Claudia Sahm on Economic Policy (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Really refreshing because I was like, oh, I am a generalist. I spent most of my time doing business investment. As I said, no one would have asked me what I thought about business investment. And though it was a really rewarding experience, Jason Furman was chair at the time. He is excellent. He worked us so hard. In a good way, Jay Shambau was the member that I worked with really closely. junior economists to interns they were just fabulous my last day at the council of economic advisors was Brexit and so I'm really good at picking good times right my first forecast at the Fed was the start of the Great Recession my last day at CEA was Brexit I worked all through the weekend what was funny is when I got back to the board on Monday”
2020-08-14 · Masters in Business · Claudia Sahm on Economic Policy (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, so by the time I went to the Council of Economic Advisors, which was in the summer of 2015, I had been at the board for several years. So I went as the macroeconomic senior economist. I covered at the White House all of domestic macro and housing policy. So when I arrived, I thought, oh, wow, there are like 100 economists or more at the board that cover these two topics. But by the time I went there, I was trained to be able to do that. I started in 2007 as an expert on consumer spending. Over time, I got to manage and oversee the staff's forecast. I had been able to do a lot of briefings and writing. So by the time I went to CEA, and that is true of everyone that they send over there, I had the experience to step into that role. And for me,”
2020-08-14 · Masters in Business · Claudia Sahm on Economic Policy (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source