YouSaid · the spoken record

Ellen Zentner

lines on the record: 97
first: 2025-08-22
most recent: 2025-08-22
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

“I think if I were to know that Models are not the end all be all. I would have started using anecdotal evidence a lot earlier. I am a very big believer in anecdotal evidence and I've been criticized for that in my career. It's not statistically sound. I like to use my one-man data sample, which is my husband when I study behavior. And I just, it's a great way to connect to people, connect to your audience, get a message across. And I'm a big believer in using anecdotal evidence when thinking about how to adjust your forecast subjectively. And so I wish I had started using that in my career even earlier.”
2025-08-22 · Masters in Business · Tariffs, The Fed, and Macro Focus with Morgan Stanley’s Ellen Zentner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I would say for them to find any and everyone they can think of that works in that field already, the best is to, if you can not to cold call, but to try to find some sort of connection, whether it's your wealth advisor and see who your wealth advisor, I get contacted by our wealth advisors that say, hey, my client has a son who this, do you mind if I put you in touch with them, find some way. And when you start to have conversations with people that are already working in areas where you think you want to work, never leave that conversation without getting two more names from them of people they think you should contact. And can they make that opening for you so that you always have another conversation to be had?”
2025-08-22 · Masters in Business · Tariffs, The Fed, and Macro Focus with Morgan Stanley’s Ellen Zentner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, we're not that far off from that. In Japan, they're already testing it. So this was in 2013. The kicker, though, is that it just so happens that Frank was a petty thief in his prior life. He's now going through early dementia. He was a petty thief and he co-ops the robot to help him. That's the fun part of the movie. But robot and Frank 2013. I'm going to absolutely check that out.”
2025-08-22 · Masters in Business · Tariffs, The Fed, and Macro Focus with Morgan Stanley’s Ellen Zentner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But isn't it also scary how books can be written that long ago and then here we are talking about humanoids and robotics? Because another, I have to say, piggybacking off of this idea of robotics and humanoids, 2013. Have you seen the movie Robot and Frank? Robot and Frank. Frank Langella was in it. Susan Sarandon, Peter Sarsgard, James Marsden, Liv Tyler. Wow, that's some cast. It is, so talk about when we think about thematics, longevity is a thematic, AI, tech, and diffusion is a thematic in terms of thematic investing. Robot and Frank is about a senior gentleman that he wants to age in place and to help him do that. His family buys him a home companion robot.”
2025-08-22 · Masters in Business · Tariffs, The Fed, and Macro Focus with Morgan Stanley’s Ellen Zentner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That was accurate. That actually is in the book, but there's a whole back story here, and I cannot wait to read it. It comes highly recommended. So you can see that my taste in books runs the gamut as well, just like my streaming.”
2025-08-22 · Masters in Business · Tariffs, The Fed, and Macro Focus with Morgan Stanley’s Ellen Zentner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The book I am just starting. And I cannot wait to get through it because the movie, the only thing that the movie that really happened that was in the movie was that there was a dead bear found in a national park with a belly full of cocaine. That is the only thing in the movie.”
2025-08-22 · Masters in Business · Tariffs, The Fed, and Macro Focus with Morgan Stanley’s Ellen Zentner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“75 years ago. The other book I brought in, so again, just like my streaming habits is called The Bluegrass Conspiracy, an inside story of power, greed, drugs, and murder. This is the backstory to cocaine bear the movie.”
2025-08-22 · Masters in Business · Tariffs, The Fed, and Macro Focus with Morgan Stanley’s Ellen Zentner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And the webcast was me and Adam Jonas. And Adam Jonas is, he was always referred to as the Tesla guy. He's probably the quintessential thought leader at Morgan Stanley. He's just got a celebrity following, and he is leading the charge on robotics and humanoids. And so after that webcast, I was sent this because this book, written in the 1950s covered rise of the corporation and replacement of the state, the ruthless efficiency of capitalism in dealing with labor, the overpowering of the worker by AI and automation. That's all in this book from the 1960s.”
2025-08-22 · Masters in Business · Tariffs, The Fed, and Macro Focus with Morgan Stanley’s Ellen Zentner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And so I have not read this book, but I'll tell you that what I'm showing you, if the listeners could see, is a handwritten note from a colleague after watching a webcast of mine. How many people get handwritten notes still? Not many.”
2025-08-22 · Masters in Business · Tariffs, The Fed, and Macro Focus with Morgan Stanley’s Ellen Zentner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Incredible, it really is still an incredible book. And every economist of mine that I have cover the consumer and study household behavior, they have to read it. So I brought in today Kurt Vonnegut's play or piano.”
2025-08-22 · Masters in Business · Tariffs, The Fed, and Macro Focus with Morgan Stanley’s Ellen Zentner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“What are some of your favorites? Yeah, I have a couple books. So when I first, as you mentioned, I was on almost exactly eight years ago and I talked about Joanacera's book, A Piece of the Action, How the Middle Class Became the Money Class. Still one of my favorite books on the rise of consumer credit in the US and our love hate relationship with it”
2025-08-22 · Masters in Business · Tariffs, The Fed, and Macro Focus with Morgan Stanley’s Ellen Zentner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Which I'm of an age that I know him in real time, but I'm from the South. So I didn't know all of these things. So my streaming habits are extremely polarized and polarizing probably. So it's anywhere from documentaries. So I can expand my knowledge and expand my mind to the most base streaming reality shows like Love Island. And I am not kidding you. If anyone wants to say, wow, she really is a real person. It's the fact that I can enjoy Love Island and then in the next hour I can enjoy a documentary on Billy Joel.”
2025-08-22 · Masters in Business · Tariffs, The Fed, and Macro Focus with Morgan Stanley’s Ellen Zentner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The TV was never on in our apartment. And so with COVID, I really, my eyes were open. And so I really love documentaries. The one that I'm watching right now is on Billy Joel.”
2025-08-22 · Masters in Business · Tariffs, The Fed, and Macro Focus with Morgan Stanley’s Ellen Zentner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Economist, he was very influential there. And I still hear from him all the time when he sees me in the media or hears of some forecasting award or something like that. Like he's still the proud papa today. And so those were two big early mentors of mine that helped shape my career.”
2025-08-22 · Masters in Business · Tariffs, The Fed, and Macro Focus with Morgan Stanley’s Ellen Zentner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, tamar plout. So, I might have mentioned I worked for her at the state of Texas. She was a very influential chief economist at the state of Texas, and that was my, she was my first, Barry. You always remember your first. So she was the first chief economist that I worked for and has followed my career for the next 25 years she's followed my career. I think my first foray into investment banking, my chief economist was David Ressler at Nomura Securities. He was a 26-year veteran chief economist at 26-year veteran of Nomura Securities. And he's now playing golf 24-7 in the South. But because it was my first foray into investment banking, into the high-frequency world, trading as a trading dusty.”
2025-08-22 · Masters in Business · Tariffs, The Fed, and Macro Focus with Morgan Stanley’s Ellen Zentner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Steady equals certainty equals surety equals the opposite of volatility. And so, you know, the markets will speak volumes.”
2025-08-22 · Masters in Business · Tariffs, The Fed, and Macro Focus with Morgan Stanley’s Ellen Zentner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think so. I mean, basically, what you're getting at in a roundabout way is just who do the markets trust? Who do the markets trust? And I think you've had Treasury Secretary Bessant that had an active role in that hair raising time between April 2nd and April 9th meeting with Chair Pal, helping to persuade the president to sort of back off at that time adding to that hair raising moment by threatening to fire PAL like the markets have come to know Bessant as a calm and steady voice. Steady is the”
2025-08-22 · Masters in Business · Tariffs, The Fed, and Macro Focus with Morgan Stanley’s Ellen Zentner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, in the first administration, you know, we were like, okay, we've got his number. We've got his number. He takes the stock market as the single best indicator of his approval rating. And so if the stock market pukes, if it's a huge sell-off, he's going to listen. And so we went into this second Trump term with the markets assuming, aha, yes. All we have to do is speak and we'll speak volumes with a sell off and he will change his tune. Well, that is not what happened. That's not what happened because the markets did puke when it became apparent that he was going to be very aggressive on a trade policy in his second term. The market puked and the president stayed the course.”
2025-08-22 · Masters in Business · Tariffs, The Fed, and Macro Focus with Morgan Stanley’s Ellen Zentner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think piggybacking on sort of your exact examples there who directly has a hand in influencing financial markets, that is the Fed chair. That is the FOMC collectively, not just the Fed chair, but the FOMC as a collective body. And that's why the markets will always be most sensitive to who is the chair of the Fed.”
2025-08-22 · Masters in Business · Tariffs, The Fed, and Macro Focus with Morgan Stanley’s Ellen Zentner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There is, yes, yes, but I'll do the opposite. No, but there are plenty of names in there that have been tossed around as possibilities that would make fine FOMC chairs. I think what you're going to see is with each of those names as they float to the top, the markets will have their say on whether that is a candidate that would be believed to be a mouthpiece of President Trump or not.”
2025-08-22 · Masters in Business · Tariffs, The Fed, and Macro Focus with Morgan Stanley’s Ellen Zentner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Up robust tenure. But yeah, and there tends to be a lot of longevity with Fed chairs because they also don't change typically with administrations. And so and political parties. They tend to span political parties. So look, there are a lot of, you know, I obviously am going to have some personal favorites of mine that have been thrown out there, but unfortunately I'm not going to give you those names. Well, just tell me.”
2025-08-22 · Masters in Business · Tariffs, The Fed, and Macro Focus with Morgan Stanley’s Ellen Zentner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yep. So I think, so I agree with you. I like the steady hand and careful thinking that comes from Treasury Secretary Besson. It would actually, in policy circles, be a demotion to send the Treasury Secretary to become chair of the FOMC. That's a demotion. We think of it. So in markets, I often hear this from investors is, wait, but the chair of the Fed is the most powerful person in the world.”
2025-08-22 · Masters in Business · Tariffs, The Fed, and Macro Focus with Morgan Stanley’s Ellen Zentner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, and it starts off that sort of vicious cycle. And so this is at the heart of why you need independent monetary policymaking, because if the market believes that the Fed might keep rates easier than the economy would otherwise dictate, then is that going to again lead to something like runaway inflation? Is it going to lead to stagnation? And that's why every time there's some headline where the Fed's independents may be threatened, you see term premium increase at the long end of the yield curve. You see the stagnation playbook go into effect among investors. And, you know, going back to US exceptionalism, independent monetary policymaking is a pillar of U.S. exceptionalism.”
2025-08-22 · Masters in Business · Tariffs, The Fed, and Macro Focus with Morgan Stanley’s Ellen Zentner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And that was normal because if you didn't buy it that day, it was more expensive the next day. That's what strikes fear in the hearts of monetary policymakers because that is inflation expectations. The price was going to be more expensive tomorrow, so you better buy it today.”
2025-08-22 · Masters in Business · Tariffs, The Fed, and Macro Focus with Morgan Stanley’s Ellen Zentner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't have a license plate. I can't believe they had the nerve to ask a 12 year old. Oh, no. Show up. But it shows you why should you, a 12-year-old, get priority for someone that needs to commute to work. But apparently. But my parents bought a house at 18% mortgage interest in 1980.”
2025-08-22 · Masters in Business · Tariffs, The Fed, and Macro Focus with Morgan Stanley’s Ellen Zentner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That was an ugly decade, and I tell those harrowing tales to my team of waiting in line for gasoline with my mother, you know, because it was rationed or we couldn't get gasoline on a Sunday.”
2025-08-22 · Masters in Business · Tariffs, The Fed, and Macro Focus with Morgan Stanley’s Ellen Zentner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So we have to take the risk seriously. And I understand why folks might be concerned that we could be headed for a time when there's collusion between the White House and the Fed, because we've been there before. So you could understand the concern. And that was a very different time between Arthur Burns and the Nixon White House. But it was a very real time and it led to the hyperinflation. And those of us of a certain age, we don't want to live through. 1970s inflation.”
2025-08-22 · Masters in Business · Tariffs, The Fed, and Macro Focus with Morgan Stanley’s Ellen Zentner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“How can we do it better? Oh, you don't like the way we measure housing? Tell us how we can do it better, cricket, cricket. No, I just like to say I don't like the way you do it. I mean, but we're not really offering a lot of sound solutions. We're a massive economy. It's not easy to measure the data, but one thing that we do well historically is we measure data well and we have the best, most robust data sets out of any other country we compare ourselves to, but it has been slipping. What I will advocate for is funding the data agencies and encouraging them to overhaul their systems.”
2025-08-22 · Masters in Business · Tariffs, The Fed, and Macro Focus with Morgan Stanley’s Ellen Zentner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Overhaul your systems without the proper funding. And so it's something that the NAE of the National Association for Business Economics has really followed this closely. We have a statistics committee that meets with all the heads of the statistical agencies and the statistical agencies have a very strong outreach program to economists in academia, in government, and in the private sector to say, here are methodologies, how can we do it better? And so we're constantly searching for ways to improve. And honestly, to their credit, half the time the private sector economists are like, crickets.”
2025-08-22 · Masters in Business · Tariffs, The Fed, and Macro Focus with Morgan Stanley’s Ellen Zentner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Maybe this survey isn't so important. Maybe I don't need to answer that. And so what we've seen is after those episodes, you tend to have a slippage in response rates that you never quite get back. Another issue is we talked about the youth boom. I don't see a lot of youthful people jumping up and down to work for the government. Maybe that's because the systems are antiquated. I wonder because you've got older generations of the government that are having to teach an antiquated programming language to younger generations coming in. Programming languages that don't exist anywhere else. And so how does that instill excitement among young people to come in and work for the government? We have also had a systematic underfunding of data agencies for quite some time as well. How can you overcome that?”
2025-08-22 · Masters in Business · Tariffs, The Fed, and Macro Focus with Morgan Stanley’s Ellen Zentner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, data integrity cuts both ways. So prior to that very high profile firing of the BLS commissioner, the concern among the economics community for quite some time has been that data integrity has been slipping. And the way we measure that is we look at survey response rates, and especially because the labor market report is the end all be-all number one data point in the US that we follow, the response rates had been slipping. And now why is that? Well, there are myriad reasons. One is that we have frequent government shutdowns. And so when the lights aren't on and no one's there to police the survey and call you the business and say, hey, it's really important that you respond and you don't get that call as a business. It starts to instill in you this sense of”
2025-08-22 · Masters in Business · Tariffs, The Fed, and Macro Focus with Morgan Stanley’s Ellen Zentner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And even though our marginal propensity you consume out of that wealth is smaller for upper income households, the growth in wealth is just enormous. And so when they're spending, it tends to mask weakness at the low end. But there are some risks along the horizon. Student borrowers have to start paying that back. I don't think that we're out of the woods and that because the economy is growing at half the pace it was last year, we're just fine. I think we can grow even more slowly before it gets better.”
2025-08-22 · Masters in Business · Tariffs, The Fed, and Macro Focus with Morgan Stanley’s Ellen Zentner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“60% of all consumer spending. And so we want what we want. And whether you say maybe that's still an artifact of COVID, we were all taught we're going to die tomorrow. So spend it achieved. It's five years later. Or it's just this tremendous, tremendous increase in real estate wealth and tremendous increase in financial wealth.”
2025-08-22 · Masters in Business · Tariffs, The Fed, and Macro Focus with Morgan Stanley’s Ellen Zentner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, it's, I mean, we've slowed to a trickle in population growth at times, but it is highly unusual. Highly unusual. You've got less bodies in the US. So you're consuming less. Now those bodies contributed to low income consumption. You've also got low-income consumers in general in the US that when prices for goods go up from tariffs or for whatever reason they're going to consume less. So consumer spending has been slowing. Now why hasn't it slowed even more so than it has when population growth has been negative from a reversal in immigration because the top end consumers are still spending? So the top income quintile in the US represents 45% of all consumer spending. If you take just the top two income quintiles, that's more than six.”
2025-08-22 · Masters in Business · Tariffs, The Fed, and Macro Focus with Morgan Stanley’s Ellen Zentner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, there's never a free lunch. So we are seeing consumer spending slow. Now it's slowing for several reasons. One, we've had a reversal of immigration in the US that is no small number of people. Bodies consume. And so if you've got fewer bodies, they're consumed.”
2025-08-22 · Masters in Business · Tariffs, The Fed, and Macro Focus with Morgan Stanley’s Ellen Zentner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“On a more regular basis, we're just doing this over a short period of time, and that's created a good deal of disruption and uncertainty and volatility in guesswork, if you will, among the economics community.”
2025-08-22 · Masters in Business · Tariffs, The Fed, and Macro Focus with Morgan Stanley’s Ellen Zentner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And like you said, this may be something where the full tariff impacts aren't felt until the fourth quarter or first quarter of next year. And if that is the case, we'll deal with it when it comes. And Chair Pal and the Fed will be there to act very nimbly around that I am confident of. But has there been unfair trade practices? Absolutely. Do we need to renegotiate trade contracts? Absolutely. I was at the state of Texas during NAFTA. NAFTA was not renegotiated until it became the USMCA under Trump's first term. Why the global economy is so dynamic, how could a trade agreement put together in the nineties still be relevant in twenty seventeen, twenty eighteen, twenty nineteen? It makes no sense. So absolutely we need to be revisiting trade alongside a dynamic global economy on a more regular basis.”
2025-08-22 · Masters in Business · Tariffs, The Fed, and Macro Focus with Morgan Stanley’s Ellen Zentner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, that's exactly how it works to the extent that companies eat it on the margin or pass it on to households and households eat it in paying higher prices. That is exactly how it works. I mean, that is the economic theory of it. That is sound. It's the degree to which the costs are absorbed and by what players along the import channel that is the unknown factor. And I can tell you that what the president is doing or has been doing is changing global trade in a way that typically would play out over a decade or so in a very short period of time. And so that's led to a tremendous amount of uncertainty.”
2025-08-22 · Masters in Business · Tariffs, The Fed, and Macro Focus with Morgan Stanley’s Ellen Zentner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, I think it's definitely too early to say no harm, no foul. And I don't think anyone, even in the administration, is saying there won't be some bit of bearing the brunt of that among consumers, among businesses in the US. I think it's just that you've got one faction saying that it's going to be a lot less of an impact than some other factions, and no one really knows. Let's all be humble about it.”
2025-08-22 · Masters in Business · Tariffs, The Fed, and Macro Focus with Morgan Stanley’s Ellen Zentner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The ability to eat some of it. I do think that even after Chinese manufacturers surprised us in 2019 to the degree that they were willing to eat the cost, I think they've been able to continue to absorb it. I think ultimately for economists because economists by and large are wearing a lot of egg on our face for getting it wrong, for sounding the alarm. But companies were sounding the alarm too. We're taking our cues from what the surveys are saying, what we're hearing directly from companies that I'm going to pass on these prices to consumers. I am not going to eat this. But then how much of that are companies talking their own book as well?”
2025-08-22 · Masters in Business · Tariffs, The Fed, and Macro Focus with Morgan Stanley’s Ellen Zentner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Terrace fall here, there, and everywhere. You're going to have some degree of manufacturers in the countries that we import from eating the cost. You're going to have importers along the way eating the cost, wholesalers eating the cost, businesses that sell final goods eating the cost, and consumers having to eat some of that as well. forecasting comes in where, okay, how much of each? What percentage of each? I think one thing that I've observed is businesses have been sitting on a good deal more cushion in terms of cash and free cash flow than I think anybody had suspected that they would be.”
2025-08-22 · Masters in Business · Tariffs, The Fed, and Macro Focus with Morgan Stanley’s Ellen Zentner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So we've certainly seen disruption in confidence. Markets don't like opaqueness. They like certainty. And we could see that early on in the volatility of, wow, January hit and it was tariffs, tariffs, tariffs, and the market clearly was caught offsides. Policymakers were caught offsides. Economists were caught off sides. And so then you kick off the flurry of activity. What does this mean? When the world order is being reset, and it can mean a whole host of things. It's one reason why all economists, all forecasters have to take a very big slice of humble pie and take a big bite out of the because the uncertainty bands of any kind of forecast you put out are going to be highly uncertain. There's no way to know the impacts of tariffs truly until well after the fact. And that's because”
2025-08-22 · Masters in Business · Tariffs, The Fed, and Macro Focus with Morgan Stanley’s Ellen Zentner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But that justifies lower rates. Doesn't tell you need to cut drastically. That's right. So, do you want a good economy or do you want the Fed to cut drastically?”
2025-08-22 · Masters in Business · Tariffs, The Fed, and Macro Focus with Morgan Stanley’s Ellen Zentner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's definitely even harder, no. But I do believe that once you have made that cut, it's a little harder to justify if the data don't keep coming in in the same fashion to say why that one adjustment was perfect, but not another. So I think where I would rather debate is how far do they need to go. And this is where I do disagree with some powers that be that the Fed is going to need to cut a lot. I think we're going to have a good economy next year. I think productivity is going to be picking up even more. I think there are parts of the one big, beautiful bill with the investment incentives that are in it, which are going to help put a floor into the economy. And we're not going to have an environment where the Fed's going to need to cut 150, 200 basis points.”
2025-08-22 · Masters in Business · Tariffs, The Fed, and Macro Focus with Morgan Stanley’s Ellen Zentner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“September, it can probably be best spent elsewhere in that the first cut is going to be the easiest because as ChairPal said, modestly restrictive? Do you need to be modestly restrictive when job growth has slowed this sharply? If you don't need to be modestly restrictive, just make an adjustment. They're not making any decisions about what happens after that. The fact that do they or don't they cut in September? And by the way, 50 basis points, that's a hard no for me. Because I knew, I could tell. I could tell the question was on your lips. It was about 1”
2025-08-22 · Masters in Business · Tariffs, The Fed, and Macro Focus with Morgan Stanley’s Ellen Zentner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, and so the fact of the matter is the market can respond on a dime when the data comes out, when financial conditions change, the Fed can't. The Fed has to look at it. It has to deliberate it. It has to gain a consensus, and then it moves. Much of the time, the market doesn't have it wrong. The market read the labor report, the most recent labor report and said, that's not good. And guess what? The Fed also thinks that's not good. Great, you're on the same page, but the market was able to price it in well ahead of the Fed actually delivering in September. So I do believe that the Fed is going to cut 25 basis points in September. Now, this is with my hat on as the chief economic strategist of Morgan Stanley Wealth Management. There are others in the firm that also have views on the Fed. But you've asked me, and the beauty of this podcast that I get to give my views, and you're only talking to me here. So I do think, though, that our focus on”
2025-08-22 · Masters in Business · Tariffs, The Fed, and Macro Focus with Morgan Stanley’s Ellen Zentner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think the markets over time had a very difficult. So there's another one don't fight the Fed. How many times do we say don't fight the Fed and markets fight the Fed and they lose? But the markets lead the Fed, now the Fed makes low frequency decisions in a high-frequency world. The market is very high frequency. That's a great...”
2025-08-22 · Masters in Business · Tariffs, The Fed, and Macro Focus with Morgan Stanley’s Ellen Zentner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So it's that the markets are pricing in that the Fed is going to do something at its next meeting and therefore the Fed has to do that. But the markets have been so wrong.”
2025-08-22 · Masters in Business · Tariffs, The Fed, and Macro Focus with Morgan Stanley’s Ellen Zentner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Maybe this gets too nuanced because economists love nothing more than getting nuanced. But it's like you got the chicken and the egg backwards.”
2025-08-22 · Masters in Business · Tariffs, The Fed, and Macro Focus with Morgan Stanley’s Ellen Zentner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“To independent monetary policy, that we have stable currency, but that comparative advantage lies in your labor force and how far you can push it. And the U.S. is just really good at that.”
2025-08-22 · Masters in Business · Tariffs, The Fed, and Macro Focus with Morgan Stanley’s Ellen Zentner · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source