YouSaid · the spoken record

Mark Zandi

lines on the record: 98
first: 2025-08-29
most recent: 2025-08-29
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

“Well, I thought everything could go back to your point about box and models. I think everything could be solved with a model. It's like, you guys, come on. This is just arithmetic, you know, mathematics. We should be able to do this. No, the world is a very messy place.”
2025-08-29 · Masters in Business · Moody's Analytics Chief Economist Mark Zandi on the US Economy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Show up. Show up I guess the other thing I'd say is, I tell my kids this every point of contact matters. Every relationship, every phone call, every email, every teams meeting, because things come around. You meet somebody in one way they'll come back 10 years from now. If you did the right thing, if you were attentive to their needs and interests, it'll benefit you in the long run. It's not easy to do. It takes energy, but every point of contact matters.”
2025-08-29 · Masters in Business · Moody's Analytics Chief Economist Mark Zandi on the US Economy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Actually, I watched that. That was very good. This is one I liked a lot. It's the ending is great. The ending is a little contrived. They need to do two more episodes or something. I'll give you”
2025-08-29 · Masters in Business · Moody's Analytics Chief Economist Mark Zandi on the US Economy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, try it. Try it. Try it. Especially, that's interesting. My wife and I watch something every night, usually half an hour to an hour.”
2025-08-29 · Masters in Business · Moody's Analytics Chief Economist Mark Zandi on the US Economy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Chin ups or pull ups, you just have to hang. You think this is easy? And he says, Men, if men can do it for two minutes, that's great. Women one minute. I'll tell you, I can't get to, I literally cannot get two minutes.”
2025-08-29 · Masters in Business · Moody's Analytics Chief Economist Mark Zandi on the US Economy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh, yeah. So it's an easy book, a summer book, right when you're on the beach. How do you live your life well long run? And a lot of it's disintuitive. It's not non-intuitive. But there's some things in there that I found useful in terms of tests you should take. And I love the hanging. A big part of the work is around grip strength. And so one of the ways you improve your grip strength is by just literally hanging from, go try it. Okay.”
2025-08-29 · Masters in Business · Moody's Analytics Chief Economist Mark Zandi on the US Economy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh, Mark Twain is his name. Oh, Mark Twain. That's right. It's a big tome. It's sitting on my nightstand gathering dust because it's so intimidating.”
2025-08-29 · Masters in Business · Moody's Analytics Chief Economist Mark Zandi on the US Economy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And then I don't normally read self-help books, but I like this book Outlive. I know everyone else has read it by four years ago. So now I'm hanging.”
2025-08-29 · Masters in Business · Moody's Analytics Chief Economist Mark Zandi on the US Economy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Because now everyone has. Oh, yes, that's for sure. But it's very entertaining. At least from a nerdy kind of perspective, sure enough.”
2025-08-29 · Masters in Business · Moody's Analytics Chief Economist Mark Zandi on the US Economy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Reading right now sounds hackney now, but you know, Barry, I like Alexander Hamilton by Chernau. I mean, that was the hackney.”
2025-08-29 · Masters in Business · Moody's Analytics Chief Economist Mark Zandi on the US Economy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Feel free to bang through these as quickly as you can. Well, I mentioned Dr. Klein in the Nobel laureate. He clearly was a key person in my professional life. My father, a professor of engineering at Penn, by the way, he'll claim he was the first to use neural nets back in the day for the studies he was doing. But I'd say those two folks, two men were the key to my professional development.”
2025-08-29 · Masters in Business · Moody's Analytics Chief Economist Mark Zandi on the US Economy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'd say Fed independence, not that people aren't talking about it, but they're not focused on it like they should be focused on it. I think this is a real, potentially a real significant problem. And the independence of the Fed is critical to a well-functioning market economy like our own. We know that from our own history. You can see what happened back in the 70s and 80s. Or looking overseas. And we need to preserve that independence. And it's not only about the actual independence, it's the perception of independence that's really critical. And it doesn't feel like to me, you follow markets more closely than I do. Maybe you have a different view, but I just don't get the sense that markets are focused on this like they should be at this point in time.”
2025-08-29 · Masters in Business · Moody's Analytics Chief Economist Mark Zandi on the US Economy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Pay attention is that's the point. It's not that the data is any worse than it has been historically there's anything nefarious going on. That is the nature of the data and it's telling us something. There's real information there. And so I do, the thing I worry about the most is if there's a decision to not release the data as timely as it's being released today, the employment numbers that we've been talking about are the most timely data that get released the Friday of the”
2025-08-29 · Masters in Business · Moody's Analytics Chief Economist Mark Zandi on the US Economy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's down from where it was. By the third, it's 90-95%. So it's still a very, very good survey. But as a result of the low response rates, we always get revisions to the data. In more typical times when the economy is moving in a straight line, those revisions are small. When you're at an inflection point or a turning point like I've been arguing we are, you get these big revisions. In fact, there's information in the revisions. It's not a bug. It's a feature. It's saying, hey, the economy's weakening and so the response rates, the responses we're getting after the first month are weaker than the ones we got in the first month and therefore we're revising down the data. That signaling, that's a strong tell that the economy is struggling and potentially at a turning point.”
2025-08-29 · Masters in Business · Moody's Analytics Chief Economist Mark Zandi on the US Economy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Has been plummeting for 10 years. And the answer to that isn't cut budgets. It isn't to cut staff. It is to put more resource in to help try to figure out how to improve those response rates. But even in the employment data, the payroll employment data that we're focused on, the response rates by the third month is, the first month, the response rate is 65. I'm making this up, but roughly speaking, 65%, 70%. Which is...”
2025-08-29 · Masters in Business · Moody's Analytics Chief Economist Mark Zandi on the US Economy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We'll have to see. But we know the economy is weakening, particularly the job numbers. And I, again, going back to, we're going to get some negative numbers here. And I think that's what they want to avoid, particularly in the context of the political environment, because there's a lot of stuff coming out of Washington about reevaluating the Federal Reserve Act of 1913, their independence. And if you're at the Fed and you're seeing that, the last thing you want to do is go into recession and get blamed for the recession in the context of all those kind of that political overlay.”
2025-08-29 · Masters in Business · Moody's Analytics Chief Economist Mark Zandi on the US Economy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think their decision to stay on hold was the right decision because they don't know what do I respond to. The inflation that I know is coming or the weaker growth that is entrain and I don't know where the policies are. I have no sense of where the tariffs are going to land, when they're going to land there. I don't know what's going on with immigration policy. So let's just sit on our hands and just let this thing unfold a little bit before we can move on policy. Businesses are done roughly the same thing. They're saying I don't really know. Therefore it's not I'm going to cut but it means I'm not going to expand. I'm going to sit on my hands. And that's why the economy has gone sideways here since the beginning of the year. But here we are now. If I'm you're at the Fed and I think they're kind of their weights on their goals or shifting. They're putting more weight on the economy than on inflation. They're thinking is inflation because the tariffs will be more one-off. They won't be persistent, which I think is a reasonable thing to think.”
2025-08-29 · Masters in Business · Moody's Analytics Chief Economist Mark Zandi on the US Economy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“He's higher disrupting a lot of businesses. Ag, we know that restaurants, construction, leisure hospitality, elder care, childcare, all those things. And presumably it will raise costs, labor costs. You'll see wages rise and add to inflationary pressures.”
2025-08-29 · Masters in Business · Moody's Analytics Chief Economist Mark Zandi on the US Economy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Exactly. It's very restrictive, and that reinforces the higher inflation in the weaker growth. So you've got two policies that are very substantive working together to raise inflation weaken economic activity.”
2025-08-29 · Masters in Business · Moody's Analytics Chief Economist Mark Zandi on the US Economy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I'm not a fan of broad based tariffs. I mean, strategic tariffs no problem. I kind of get that. But broad-based tariffs, you know, we've been there. We've done that. You mentioned the 1930s. In fact, you can go back 100 years before that under Andrew Jackson, and we tried broad-based tariffs, and it didn't work out so well. It takes about 100 years for us to forget the mistake and do it again. So I don't think this is going to end well. It raises inflation by definition. And then we'll see more of those pass, those prices pass through to consumers over the next six, 12 months as the time passes here, and it lowers growth. It pushes the economy towards stagflation. And the immigration policy, highly restrictive immigration policy, and I get the need for addressing the southern border.”
2025-08-29 · Masters in Business · Moody's Analytics Chief Economist Mark Zandi on the US Economy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Administration, he wrote a check Well, particularly if the economy's not at full employment, if you're flat on your back like you were in the pandemic or the financial crisis, you provide stimulus. Then you don't get the crowding out, you don't get the higher interest rates, you don't get the inflation, but you get the growth. We're now closer to full employment. So that's a bit of a more dangerous game because if you overstimulate and you're in full employment, you're going to get the inflation. And already inflation is an issue given the tariffs and the immigration policy.”
2025-08-29 · Masters in Business · Moody's Analytics Chief Economist Mark Zandi on the US Economy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, that's when the new fiscal year begins. And so they could come up with more stimulus. Right. You've heard talk of a stimulus check. I'll pay for the, we'll take the tariff revenue and I'll rebate some of that back to Americans in the form of a check. And that would be stimulus.”
2025-08-29 · Masters in Business · Moody's Analytics Chief Economist Mark Zandi on the US Economy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And that may be the way out of recession, not only it's really getting more fiscal support, right? And we will likely get another reconciliation piece of the BBB, the big beautiful bill, was reconciliation. They'll take another, they have another shot at that on the other side of the fiscal year.”
2025-08-29 · Masters in Business · Moody's Analytics Chief Economist Mark Zandi on the US Economy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Driving some hard spending. Yeah. And that should also help the construction markets, too, right? You would think, right? I'd take some time. Real estate's a little still”
2025-08-29 · Masters in Business · Moody's Analytics Chief Economist Mark Zandi on the US Economy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Exactly internationally. And that's my sense of what's happening. So, what's going on in the equity market is actually. I think consistent with what we're observing in the economy now, if the stock market starts to head south writ large and we see non-AI part of the market starting to go south here, I think that's a strong signal that we're going in, that we're going into. And the equity market is not only important as a signal, but increasingly it drives economic activity because the bulk of spending in the economy today is done by folks in the top part of the income and wealth. Top”
2025-08-29 · Masters in Business · Moody's Analytics Chief Economist Mark Zandi on the US Economy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Exactly. U.S. growth. And also, you got tax cuts. So if you just assume stimulus, fiscal stimulus. You have PE constant PE multiple if you raise after tax earnings, you should get a higher price. So if you abstract from those things that are independent of the economic cycle, the stock market at best is flat from where it is at the beginning of the year. And that's the economy. It's flat. It's gone nowhere. Now”
2025-08-29 · Masters in Business · Moody's Analytics Chief Economist Mark Zandi on the US Economy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, and that's the reason why one reason why I don't have a recession in the baseline the equity market is held up. Although obviously a big part of what's going on in the equity market is related to AI and that has nothing to do with the business cycle.”
2025-08-29 · Masters in Business · Moody's Analytics Chief Economist Mark Zandi on the US Economy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“A slight, it's actually 1% on the nose year over year through Q4 of this year, Q1 of next, which is historically below the economy's potential, no job growth”
2025-08-29 · Masters in Business · Moody's Analytics Chief Economist Mark Zandi on the US Economy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think our baseline outlook, my baseline outlook has no recession, just a weak economy. We kind of struggle the way through.”
2025-08-29 · Masters in Business · Moody's Analytics Chief Economist Mark Zandi on the US Economy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's right. But it's not a job until you fill it. Right. So you could actually, and right now, labor force is declining if you believe the data believe the precision of the data, but the level of the labor force in July, the last data point, is lower than it was back in January. And so that would suggest that it's going to be very difficult for the economy to generate jobs. And it's very possible we start getting job loss, just negative numbers.”
2025-08-29 · Masters in Business · Moody's Analytics Chief Economist Mark Zandi on the US Economy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I mean, at the end of the day, if you're a full employment and we're close, 4.2% unemployment rate, the only way you can generate a job is if you've got someone to fill the job. You need someone who's working. So if the labor force isn't growing, right now it's just flat. It really has. Well, actually, if you look at it, well, you could have Joe.”
2025-08-29 · Masters in Business · Moody's Analytics Chief Economist Mark Zandi on the US Economy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Next question. Tell us about the labor market. It's consistent with the economy is struggling, the job numbers are showing very little job growth in recent months, and I would not be surprised in the next few months, assuming we get the data from the Bureau Labor Statistics, we can kind of talk about that, assuming we actually get the data, we could actually see some would not be surprised if we saw some negative numbers, actual declines in employment”
2025-08-29 · Masters in Business · Moody's Analytics Chief Economist Mark Zandi on the US Economy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And then it sucks the tail. But what real narratives for growth is the change in. Gotcha. And you've passed the peak. It's coming now during the...”
2025-08-29 · Masters in Business · Moody's Analytics Chief Economist Mark Zandi on the US Economy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Some of it is still on high, but it's now rolling over. It's a high level of spending, but you've now passed the peak in spending is now starting to come in. And we're not going to see any more infrastructure spending on the public side for quite some time. Really? I don't think so.”
2025-08-29 · Masters in Business · Moody's Analytics Chief Economist Mark Zandi on the US Economy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There's different ways. Yeah, yeah, healthcare is fine. Data center is booming. Offices are way down. Multifamily is down. Residential, single families way down. So you add it all up. And now public construction is starting to roll over, right? Right. Because you had that big lift because of the infrastructure legislation that was passed a few years ago.”
2025-08-29 · Masters in Business · Moody's Analytics Chief Economist Mark Zandi on the US Economy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's affordability. People can't afford the New York. That's all it is. Yeah, it's just affordability. And the builders have done an admirable job with incentives, interest rate buy downs to keep the market going and maintaining construction levels, but that's over. They're not able to do it. No more buying down rates. So now we're seeing single family home building come down for the first time. Multifamily has been coming down for at least a year because it got overbuilt, all these luxury towers going up in New York and Philly and China. Palm Beach. Vacancy rates are too high, rents are too weak. The commercial non-residential side is also very weak. The only strength is data centers, clearly. And even with that, though, if you look at overall construction spending, it's like over, was it $2 trillion? It's declining.”
2025-08-29 · Masters in Business · Moody's Analytics Chief Economist Mark Zandi on the US Economy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I like that. So, lack of clar And the data say it so GDP growth, the value of all the things we produce, that was barely 1% in the first half of the year. Consumer spending has gone nowhere all year long. Manufacturing's in recession, constructions in recession, transportation distribution is in recession.”
2025-08-29 · Masters in Business · Moody's Analytics Chief Economist Mark Zandi on the US Economy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It is. So, what is driving that? I have to be humble because what ails the economy is pretty obvious. It's economic policy, and it can change quickly. Therefore, you have to be humble here because policy can change and we may not the economy may find its footing as a result we avoid recession. So there's a lot of, I hate using the word, but it's the only word I can think of. It's uncertainty. I mean, there is a lot of that in economic forecasts.”
2025-08-29 · Masters in Business · Moody's Analytics Chief Economist Mark Zandi on the US Economy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You're listening to My better than average guest this week is Mark Zandi. He's the chief accountant. You pulled me out on it.”
2025-08-29 · Masters in Business · Moody's Analytics Chief Economist Mark Zandi on the US Economy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Base That's one of those sinkholes, right? That's why the sinkholes are a real problem. Where? In Florida. No kidding. Yeah, because of the bubbling up. It undermines the ground.”
2025-08-29 · Masters in Business · Moody's Analytics Chief Economist Mark Zandi on the US Economy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, literally under seawater, sea level is rising, and it's doing real damage, and so you have to consider that. So here in the U.S., it's an issue overseas is becoming, in some parts of the world, existential”
2025-08-29 · Masters in Business · Moody's Analytics Chief Economist Mark Zandi on the US Economy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So that's going to change. But that had been the case. But the other thing is overseas, climate is a real issue. Just go to Indonesia. The central bank is a client and they're doing a lot of climate assessment because Jakarta is increasingly underwater, right? Literally not, you know.”
2025-08-29 · Masters in Business · Moody's Analytics Chief Economist Mark Zandi on the US Economy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, yeah, and convective storms, the big thunderstorms that come along and they drop a lot of does tremendous damage. Yeah.”
2025-08-29 · Masters in Business · Moody's Analytics Chief Economist Mark Zandi on the US Economy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, let me get here's a good factoid for you, or I'll ask you guess which state has the highest homeowners insurance cost in the country?”
2025-08-29 · Masters in Business · Moody's Analytics Chief Economist Mark Zandi on the US Economy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“He's a hoax. Great point. An entity like insurance. It's critical. So house prices. Go look at house prices in Florida. We were talking about the west coast of Florida. They're falling and they're falling because homeowners' insurance costs are rising because of the cost of hurricanes and other storm damage. So the insurers take that all in. They raise a homeowner's insurance and that depresses demand and price. And of course that has all kinds of implications for mortgage credit risk for if you're in mortgage insurer, if you're in the mortgage business in any kind of respect. So that's a great example of where the kind of economic forecasting is really critical to what's going on in real life. And particularly with climate, it's real. It's happening. There's damage and insurers are trying to figure that out and they're now building that into their premiums and it's having a real impact. Right now it's more concentrated in places like Florida and Texas.”
2025-08-29 · Masters in Business · Moody's Analytics Chief Economist Mark Zandi on the US Economy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There is, but the actual business itself is very simple. One of the things that has been kind of a tailwind to our work has been the regulatory environment, right? The financial institutions all over the globe need to do stress tests for capital planning. It's even now embedded in the loan loss provisioning CECL here in the US as an accounting framework that requires forward-looking projections. IFRS 9 overseas, climate stress testing, all those things require a very disciplined comprehensive approach to economic forecasting. And so that's really been key to the business here over the last 10, 15 years.”
2025-08-29 · Masters in Business · Moody's Analytics Chief Economist Mark Zandi on the US Economy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We're very simple business. My part of Moody's is a very simple business. We produce economic forecasts in scenarios. Yeah, but that's”
2025-08-29 · Masters in Business · Moody's Analytics Chief Economist Mark Zandi on the US Economy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, also from coming to a purely academic perspective for an economist, I mean, this was just an incredible time. Once every century you see something like this, and there's so much that you're learning while you're doing. And it was not only just economics, it was also political economy. What should lawmakers do and how should they do it? And all the moving parts there. So it was a very amazing time. And that's when I wrote that first book was it's not a great book, Barry. And there is a, I did write a chapter, chapter seven on the rating agencies, but I did not put it in because I was part of the rating agency and no one would believe me anyway.”
2025-08-29 · Masters in Business · Moody's Analytics Chief Economist Mark Zandi on the US Economy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So there was liquidity Well, and also just trying to find out was it 30 or was it 50 or was it 75? You don't know. Yeah, you don't know. You really don't know.”
2025-08-29 · Masters in Business · Moody's Analytics Chief Economist Mark Zandi on the US Economy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Our money to make payroll. Right. Well, there were so many things going on. Remember this commercial paper market had frozen and completely frozen. And of course, that's key to making payroll for a lot of these companies.”
2025-08-29 · Masters in Business · Moody's Analytics Chief Economist Mark Zandi on the US Economy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source