YouSaid · the spoken record

Mary Daly

lines on the record: 78
first: 2025-08-08
most recent: 2025-08-08
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

“You put your best ideas out there, you have to be willing to listen to criticisms or support. And then you have to turn around and ask people, let's use this disagreement to our advantage as opposed to using it as a way to divide. And I think that's historically what have made the most successful Fed chairs. But honestly, it makes a successful committee member. We all have to go in with the idea that this is not about us. This is about the people we serve. We know who those are, the American people.”
2025-08-08 · Odd Lots · Mary Daly on Why Alaska Is a Leading Indicator for the US Economy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think you could be a regional Fed president, you could be anyone who works at the Federal Reserve system. You could simply be a citizen of the United States or someone who cares deeply about how the country goes. And the requirements are always the same. You put other people first above your own self. You think about decisions that serve the American people, and you do that without flinching if the criticism comes as long as you're doing it and you're using your committee and you're getting to a judgment that you think is best for the American people. That's an important quality. And the other important quality is to listen. The diversity of the inputs we get from all types of people, businesses, communities, markets, that's important. The disagreements or differences of lens that people put on things and say, well, I don't see the world like that. Any leader, no matter what they're leading, has to be able to listen to be successful. That's my personal belief. You have to listen. You have to know what”
2025-08-08 · Odd Lots · Mary Daly on Why Alaska Is a Leading Indicator for the US Economy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, you know, if you take the, just take the idea that we import things. If the cost of those imports goes up either because the dollar is weaker, we don't make dollar policy. Just want to say that. We take the dollar as outside of our world. It's just another input to our equation. But if you have a weaker dollar and you're paying them more to it.”
2025-08-08 · Odd Lots · Mary Daly on Why Alaska Is a Leading Indicator for the US Economy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In central banking, and this is true at the Fed, but I think other central banks as well, you never want to rule out a tool simply because we haven't used it before. And we did use our tools in an aggressive way. But one shouldn't take that to me, and I think that's the likely outcome. But I do think we should think of all of our tools and all of our meetings as being available to us at all times because the job isn't pick a tool that's exactly the one that everybody expects you to use. The job is. Restore price stability and do it without tripping up the labor market and leaving people with lower inflation but no jobs.”
2025-08-08 · Odd Lots · Mary Daly on Why Alaska Is a Leading Indicator for the US Economy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“As another effect for another twelve to 18 months. Who knows what exactly the lags of monetary policy are? The only thing people can agree with is it has a lag.”
2025-08-08 · Odd Lots · Mary Daly on Why Alaska Is a Leading Indicator for the US Economy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Takes time once inflation gets up, it takes time to bring it down. And the reason you would adjust policy before you totally get there, let's put tarots aside for a minute. Let's just think about the regular dynamics of the economy. If you wait to see the whites of the eyes of 2% inflation, you will be too late because policy tightness today is not just a reflection of where interest rates are today. It's a reflection of where interest rates have been over the last 12 to 18 months. And they've been modestly restrictive. So they're gradually slowing the economy and gradually bringing inflation down. And the thing we had been waiting for, at least I had been waiting for for a long time, was for this to start showing through the housing sector. And it has been in the last several months. And so that's a really big and important sector that has to have inflation come down for us to achieve our 2% goal. So if you started extrapolating services inflation excluding housing is coming down, housing is coming down. The goods sector without the tariffs was coming down. We have to adjust policy before we get there because remember anything we do, if we left it exactly where it is.”
2025-08-08 · Odd Lots · Mary Daly on Why Alaska Is a Leading Indicator for the US Economy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Direction of travel. I feel a little bit like back in the 90s, you could see people doing some, well, maybe really the 2000s after the dot coms. You saw people doing internet purchases. And we would collect retail statistics on how many things were bought on the internet. And people would regularly say, that's not big enough. Don't worry about it. But you know, you have to look ahead, right? It might not be big enough today, but you don't have time to practice and develop metrics and practice your evaluations and learn from that. If you wait till it's giant. So I think absolutely we have to think about it right now and assess it as part of what we do. And the good news is we are assessing it. And I don't see special particular risks to this. And I think Congress is doing, Congress is supposed to do, looking over the parameters and saying what's a stable coin process that can work. How do we ring fence these types of things? That's what you want. But that doesn't have those powers. We're implementing our policy that”
2025-08-08 · Odd Lots · Mary Daly on Why Alaska Is a Leading Indicator for the US Economy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Of how loose or tighter financial conditions and how vulnerable is the economy to financial stability concerns. So you're right to ask, you know, is it big enough now that we would look at it? I think it is big enough we would look at it. It's not that it's big today, so it's material. It's that it's big and growing. Getting bigger every time.”
2025-08-08 · Odd Lots · Mary Daly on Why Alaska Is a Leading Indicator for the US Economy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, the way I think about crypto and the conversations about stable coins and other things, so let's separate crypto from stablecoins for putting a big umbrella and people think it's the same, but it's actually very different. So a stablecoin is another way to fund yourself so you can trade, right? I can do a cross-border transaction. I don't have to wait. I don't have to do currency changes. And so those things are just about a technology or an innovation that smooths out the exchange, particularly across borders. The crypto is an asset. It's a digital asset, so you can invest in it and it can grow, but it can also decline. And I think there's appetite for other kinds of assets to invest in. You don't have to invest in a mainline blue chip company. You can invest in this and you can get some gains. So the question for me is always, how do we incorporate that? Maybe it's enthusiasm and also that risk into our assessment.”
2025-08-08 · Odd Lots · Mary Daly on Why Alaska Is a Leading Indicator for the US Economy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You're going to use technology, of course, and you're going to think about making more strategic decisions about what do we need to do to ensure that we have a diverse economy, et cetera. The concentration in education and healthcare and other things that we've been seeing, that's not new. I mean, that was been going on. People were talking about that a couple years ago or a year ago. What's interesting is how durable will that be, right? Healthcare makes good jobs and it helps the economy because it puts resources. They earn a living. They come back. They buy things if they want to be in healthcare. But we don't have enough people currently interested in healthcare to support that if it keeps on growing. And I think that's another challenge that you're seeing. And hospitals across the country are trying to manage that.”
2025-08-08 · Odd Lots · Mary Daly on Why Alaska Is a Leading Indicator for the US Economy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The younger population and even the economic productive capacity has to support that. So the answer to that is you have to grow the economy and you have to be strategic enough and it's not the Fed's job, but this is something that I think many Americans are trying to do, many governments are trying to do, national and state and local. How do you create an economy that can support those and still support the citizenry that is in their working age and their families?”
2025-08-08 · Odd Lots · Mary Daly on Why Alaska Is a Leading Indicator for the US Economy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, this has been something that we know is coming for 30 years. I started my career. I started writing my dissertation on aging and taking care of people and how does that change the economy and what do we have to do and how does it change growth and output and potential. And one of the things you can see is if you lose workers, then they go into retirement, you're going to constrain labor supply, labor growth, but you're also going to tip the pyramid of what we have to produce and what we have to take care of. And so that's happening. You can see healthcare is growing, et cetera. Education now, just in state budgets, if you look at state budgets, there's a battle between do we take care of our older citizens or do we invest in education? And it sounds, you know, it's dire sounding, but honestly, that's the trade-offs. We're a nation now who has a very an aging population with increasing needs.”
2025-08-08 · Odd Lots · Mary Daly on Why Alaska Is a Leading Indicator for the US Economy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Softer, what is more accommodating? What is it? And I think that's a change in the marketplace that's meant. We all have to be very knowledgeable about the entirety of the forces that affect financial conditions.”
2025-08-08 · Odd Lots · Mary Daly on Why Alaska Is a Leading Indicator for the US Economy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Into retirement. But I think the stock market's more interesting from that point. I think really what's even more interesting to me is the fact that you have to look at a variety of things. You have to look from how banks are doing, how private equity is doing, how the stock market's doing, what does it all tell you. And so we are broadening how we calculate financial conditions. You can't just look at the interest rates. I used to, when I first started at the Fed, when we were talking to our boards and councils, we had a little chart of interest rates. We had the 30 year, the 10 year, the two-year treasury, and it had a mortgage interest rate. Now you have to talk about financial conditions writ large. Are they tighter?”
2025-08-08 · Odd Lots · Mary Daly on Why Alaska Is a Leading Indicator for the US Economy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, if that was the main group we were relying on. But I think that is something interesting. I mean, what's really contributing to the lower labor force is immigration and the fact that we have a baby boom aging into.”
2025-08-08 · Odd Lots · Mary Daly on Why Alaska Is a Leading Indicator for the US Economy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Only from a standpoint that more people are accessing the stock market, but still not the majority of people, right? More people have it than have it 401k or have some kind of an index fund that they're investing in. But it's not so universal that it's a main driver. What I have noticed is that since the stock market rebounded, you know, had That a lot of people who thought they were going to return to work from the 55 and older went back into retirement or taking care of grandchildren. Because there was a lot of. That is a very sensitive group of people. If you've retired and then you see your stock market evaluations fall, your 401k fall, you think, oh, maybe I should do something. The rising”
2025-08-08 · Odd Lots · Mary Daly on Why Alaska Is a Leading Indicator for the US Economy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Lowering the policy rate because we don't want to break the labor market in an effort to give you a little bit lower inflation a little bit faster. I think that's the burden on us. That's our responsibility. We have to do better at it.”
2025-08-08 · Odd Lots · Mary Daly on Why Alaska Is a Leading Indicator for the US Economy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Explain why you made the decision. Ultimately, if we just put the decision out, we just raised a flagpole saying interest rates have been cut 25 basis point, I think we'd be very vulnerable to what you just said, because then optics dominate reality. But what you do instead, the remedy for that is be very open about how you're making a decision, how you're balancing the trade-offs. And we were definitely in a trade-off space, right? Because we're not in the divine coincidence. The divine coincidence is a lovely place for central bankers to be. They wish they could live there all the time where one interest rate solves both goals, not where we are. If we lower the interest rate, some of the downward pressure off inflation, but we'll still get there, but we're supporting the labor market. If we completely support the labor market, with no attention to inflation, we're likely to see it shoot up again. So not perhaps as high as it was before, but definitely there. So those are trade-offs. We have to explain to the American people we're making decisions under trade-offs.”
2025-08-08 · Odd Lots · Mary Daly on Why Alaska Is a Leading Indicator for the US Economy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But now one of my contacts said uncertainty is the new normal. We expect uncertainty for the next four years and three and a half years. And so we're just going to live with it. And when you live with it, you don't change the fact that you want to grow and you want to hire and you want to do these things, but you do make more careful decisions because you don't know what could happen. But if you wait for the uncertainty to clear, this is what he said. If you wait for the uncertainty to clear, you will find that four years later you've lost your business. So we're not doing it.”
2025-08-08 · Odd Lots · Mary Daly on Why Alaska Is a Leading Indicator for the US Economy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And no retaliation that they wouldn't actually go to the negotiating table. And so all of that's happened. And then on top of it, it wasn't clear how firms would respond. Would re firms just sit on the sidelines and wait for it all to be over, or would they continue to participate in their economy and in their growth? And so there was this period for the first three or four weeks after the original announcement where firms are like, I got to wait because I don't know. In fact, some firms were not even bringing the ships at sail, they were already outside the port, they weren't taking delivery on the goods because they wanted to wait and see.”
2025-08-08 · Odd Lots · Mary Daly on Why Alaska Is a Leading Indicator for the US Economy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Absolutely. I think when the tariff announcements on Liberation Day were very high, it wasn't clear that countries wouldn't reciprocate in tariff us or that they would.”
2025-08-08 · Odd Lots · Mary Daly on Why Alaska Is a Leading Indicator for the US Economy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And we did that in part because we had all these headwinds coming from overseas. So we weren't in a precarious place, but we were accommodating to the headwinds. We were trying to support the economy against those headwinds to ensure we didn't tip over. I see today as very similar. The only difference, and it's important difference, it's a very important difference. Inflation's not one point eight. Inflation is higher. And expected to go higher, at least temporarily on the basis of tariffs. And so it's always more challenging, and this will be a communications challenge if we are lowering the interest rate in the face of rising inflation. Then the burden is on us to explain that we're not seeing persistence and to offer what is true, that if it turns out to be persistence built, we will turn around and raise the interest rate.”
2025-08-08 · Odd Lots · Mary Daly on Why Alaska Is a Leading Indicator for the US Economy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So it is true that the economy is outperformed. Everyone's expectations over the past several years. That's just a fact. And I think that bodes well for the momentum and the resilience of our economy collectively to weather shocks. But now as we get the labor market's imbalance, we're starting to see some softening. We're starting to see some sentiment. We have been seeing sentiment come down. And then on top of it, inflation is close to our target and interest rates are still restrictive. That leaves us more vulnerable. Think back to 2019. 2019, we cut rates twice.”
2025-08-08 · Odd Lots · Mary Daly on Why Alaska Is a Leading Indicator for the US Economy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Think about it. I'll just walk through how I think about it. So, yes, you have to take contextualization around it, right? You know, where you start matters. But right now, I don't think we're in that place where it's actually is relevant. Here's why. Two years ago, if we had a hot labor market and at times it was even frothy and inflation's printing at 5%, well, then that's a very different economy in terms of where we are than today. But right now we have an economy that's really resilient. It has proven its resiliency. But we're also very close to getting to a point of maximum employment and price stability. So then if you have shocks to the economy and you're in this balance, well, then, and you've got interest rates that are restrictive, you end up being more vulnerable.”
2025-08-08 · Odd Lots · Mary Daly on Why Alaska Is a Leading Indicator for the US Economy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, you hear this a lot in all communities, but so far people have said it's not really biting us. And the reason is, and they use that term biting us, and here's, so what's the reason? So then you ask why, because you use a lot of immigrant labor, why isn't it biting? And it's because labor demand is slowing. So we're losing members of the labor force. At the same time, labor demand is slowing, which is, I would offer one of the reasons we're still seeing the balance in the labor market that we have because those workers are not coming or they're leaving and then the domestic labor supply is consistent with the labor demand that's out there. But firms tell me on a regular basis that if they were growing like they were a year ago, they would have a shortage.”
2025-08-08 · Odd Lots · Mary Daly on Why Alaska Is a Leading Indicator for the US Economy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, look at the, you look at rate, and the unemployment rate is a good thing to look at, but it will lag, deterioration in the labor market. So you have to look at those other ones as well. So I look at initial claims for unemployment insurance because people have to go in and file. It's a good administrative record. And then I look at quits rates, job finding rates, those types of things. And there I didn't see signs of weakness. But you can't wait forever. And at this point, the piece of information I'm also getting is that there are very few signs that inflation, tariff-based inflation in the goods sector is spilling over to the other sectors, and inflation expectations are stable at the medium and longer end. There's not much of a case for persistence at that point. So then you think, well, if we really want to get the soft landing and give people what they deserve, which is lower inflation, 2% price stability, inflation, and a labor market that still sustainably works, well, we've got to start recalibrating policy.”
2025-08-08 · Odd Lots · Mary Daly on Why Alaska Is a Leading Indicator for the US Economy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Employment level, like how much job growth do we have Because we've had this very large swing in how many immigrants are in the labor force. The labor force went from people I'd estimate at 150 is the trend growth we need to have so that unemployment doesn't rise. Now it's in the 70s, maybe the 60s. That's a big change. So I look at rates, unemployment rate, job finding rate, quit rate, all that.”
2025-08-08 · Odd Lots · Mary Daly on Why Alaska Is a Leading Indicator for the US Economy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You think about okay, what about job finding rates not just in aggregate, but by duration of unemployment? When the labor market's really weakening, people push out in duration. It's harder to find a job. But then you see those job finding rates really decline for out durations. You're not seeing that. So those are wage growth isn't stumbling. You're just not seeing those things. And so for me, it was about, okay, we're seeing a signal that this might be softening to weakening, but we don't know yet. So then you go back, leave the interest rate where it is because inflation is still printing above target and you have some more time. But the first labor market report we get has a bit of a tick up in unemployment and you get those jobs numbers. I will say maybe because your listeners will be interested in it, it's not a good time to look at levels. It's really not a good time to look at.”
2025-08-08 · Odd Lots · Mary Daly on Why Alaska Is a Leading Indicator for the US Economy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, that confirmation, the evidence. So let's take the labor market, for example. So, in advance of July meeting, we do this all the time, but since we just had the July meeting, let's talk about it. So in advance of the July meeting, we were here, we think the labor market's softening. So I'm asking the question, is it weakening? No, softening is what we would expect. Weakening is a different signal. So you take the entire dashboard of labor market indicators and you ask, what's happening to the ones that lead? Initial claims for unemployment. They've been stable. You unpack and you look at all the states, you get their initial claims data, there's really no red flags dates, there's only two that are showing a lot of pickup, DC, an area, and Michigan. Those are the two places. Otherwise, most of them look pretty stable.”
2025-08-08 · Odd Lots · Mary Daly on Why Alaska Is a Leading Indicator for the US Economy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I'm really not waiting to see anything as much as I'm looking to collect the information that shows that what I believe is happening is happening. So it's not like I'm waiting to see something and I'm going to go, aha, it worked. I mean, it's happening. We got to get on it. It's really about, we just keep coming.”
2025-08-08 · Odd Lots · Mary Daly on Why Alaska Is a Leading Indicator for the US Economy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“If you think we're going back to pre-pandemic levels of interest rates that were considered neutral, I don't think that's likely to happen. And that's commercial real estate folks are really attuned to this. And they knew that a year and a half ago. Markets knew that a year ago, but I think we're still working on businesses and consumers to recognize those were not in days we're likely to return to, at least in the near term.”
2025-08-08 · Odd Lots · Mary Daly on Why Alaska Is a Leading Indicator for the US Economy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The interest rates are not set nationally. I mean, we've set interest rates nationally, but interest rates are global. If you remember prior to the pandemic, interest rates and after the GFC, interest rates, the real rate of interest was just falling. Inflation was below most countries' targets, and it was the sluggish growth, inflation expectations are falling. How are we going to manage this stagnation that's going to come from this, secular stagnation? Then, of course, inflation rises in almost every country, and we're talking about the real interest rate going up, not down. And so we're looking at a place where it settles now at the neutral rate in nominal terms, settling around three or higher, not at 2.5. So that's a pretty big increase in the rate of interest, the neutral rate of interest. And frankly, the direction seems to be pushing it up, not pulling it down. And I think that's where I try to explain to people the most is that interest rate cuts”
2025-08-08 · Odd Lots · Mary Daly on Why Alaska Is a Leading Indicator for the US Economy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Let me say this. Let me say this. Yeah, let me say this. We were having these conversations about the rising neutral rate of interest before the election, before the administration changed. And so I think we should look to what are the fundamental factors in our economy that are changing the neutral rate of interest, not just in the US, but in the”
2025-08-08 · Odd Lots · Mary Daly on Why Alaska Is a Leading Indicator for the US Economy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Can adjust policy in the short end in a way that's meant to balance the goals, but we can't control all the aspects of the yield curve.”
2025-08-08 · Odd Lots · Mary Daly on Why Alaska Is a Leading Indicator for the US Economy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Love that question because I think it's hard to remind people on a regular basis that we are not the only game in town at the Federal Reserve. We don't control, we're not yield curve targeters, so we're not controlling all the things that would move the yield curve. What moves along into the yield curve is, of course, Fed policy, inflation expectations. Those have been well anchored, so I don't think that's driving them, geopolitical risks, how we're viewed as a trading country or a reserve currency, what our debt looks like going forward in projections, and how we think we're going to manage all of that together, right? So right now it looks like the markets are just reacting to all of the risk. We have rising debt, we have geopolitical risk, we're not sure how our trading partners like us right now, and then all of this could be burdensome and mostly could push up the real rate of interest over time, right? The natural rate of interest or the neutral rate of interest. And so you're seeing that. And ultimately, the Fed.”
2025-08-08 · Odd Lots · Mary Daly on Why Alaska Is a Leading Indicator for the US Economy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Unpacking that, but then when the jobs market report got revised, I was like, okay, that makes more sense, even if the direction, I mean, even if the magnitude is vastly different than anything I probably think will go forward, I think the direction of change is accurate.”
2025-08-08 · Odd Lots · Mary Daly on Why Alaska Is a Leading Indicator for the US Economy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We talk about what we do, and part of talking about what we do is to say we have History and models that tell us a little bit about how the economy works. We have the incoming information and we have all the periods of time when the information has been volatile and we can understand the underlying trends. And then we have the people we talk to. And what was interesting about the jobs report on Friday is it better matched in the direction of change, not in the magnitude, it better matched what I've been hearing. And so a disciplining device for data that you don't know if they're really accurate is what you hear from people because people do not tell you, I feel really, really comfortable getting a job only to find out that the job market report is bad. What they will tell you is, boy, it looks really worrisome out there. And then you get a jobs report that doesn't look like the rapid job growth. That was the thing that was out of whack. The rapid job growth from the month before is when I said, well, really? That's not what I'm hearing. What's the gap? And we spent a lot of time digging in.”
2025-08-08 · Odd Lots · Mary Daly on Why Alaska Is a Leading Indicator for the US Economy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So there's privately collected data. We talked about foot traffic and things, but there's the ADP employment data. You can think about that. There's the prices project. You can look at those data. Importantly, though, I think it's not just getting other sources of data. It's learning. So say that a lot of the CPI prices are imputed. Then we need to bring our best statistical minds to think about if I take the ones that aren't imputed and I look at how correlated they are with underlying inflation over time, what do I learn? Are they a good signal?”
2025-08-08 · Odd Lots · Mary Daly on Why Alaska Is a Leading Indicator for the US Economy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“public survey, they've lost a little confidence in public institutions, maybe a lot of confidence in public institutions. And so the real call to action here for me is it is part, you know, the Federal Reserve is not all public institutions, but we should do our part to demonstrate to people and to talk to people, go to the critics and say, what is it that you're not trusting, and then tell our story, maybe they have things that they're going to bring that we should listen to and basically lean into this idea that we do this work for them and that we want them to trust that we're doing it for them.”
2025-08-08 · Odd Lots · Mary Daly on Why Alaska Is a Leading Indicator for the US Economy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Not simply relying on those pieces of information. And importantly, since we're at a turning point right now, kind of by a transition point, it feels like a turning point where the economy is slowing, inflation's coming down because of restrictive interest rates. And we're trying to achieve that soft landing, that the data are always volatile. They're volatile on any turning point, whether we're turning from a downturn into an expansion, you miss the job growth. When you come down, you tend to miss the job loss or the net losses. So that's something I'm always familiar with at this point. I've been doing this for a while. I know that's going to happen. The magnitude of the changes is pretty severe on Friday from the week before. Is that survey response? Is that seasonal adjustments because things are different? Or is that something else going on? I trust the BLS will unpack that and give us some answer about that. But ultimately on the response rates, I say that when I ask people, would you respond to”
2025-08-08 · Odd Lots · Mary Daly on Why Alaska Is a Leading Indicator for the US Economy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Important to any nation that's trying to follow things, and not just the Federal Reserve, but policymakers across the board, including states and localities, to businesses who need to know what is the economy look like so they can put it into their sales projections. And so making sure that we're investing enough in that information, making sure we know how important it is, I think is an essential goal. On the other side,”
2025-08-08 · Odd Lots · Mary Daly on Why Alaska Is a Leading Indicator for the US Economy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'm going to put it slightly differently than main instruments. I think they're key instruments, but we've been broadening our portfolio of instruments for monitoring for really since the GFC, since the global financial crisis, because what you learned in the global financial crisis is you're not going to get enough information just looking at these main series to really know what's going on. Then we had to do that, of course, in the pandemic, and we got all these real-time series. We were using open table data. How many people were going out? Is it transit traffic, et cetera? What I would offer is this there's two things that I think about. We are revered, have been revered across the globe for our data collection and our data continuity and our data integrity. Those three things are”
2025-08-08 · Odd Lots · Mary Daly on Why Alaska Is a Leading Indicator for the US Economy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I make the same decisions using the same information, using the same models and sources. Of course, the models and sources change depending on the kind of condition we're in in the economy, but the process, we talked about process a moment ago. The process remains the same. Be curious? Figure out as much as you possibly can. Always learn, then take a decision that you think is right, that we collectively think is right for the nation and the outlook, and then have enough humility that you can ask the question, did we make the right decision? And what more do we need to learn to make a better one? And I think that always works. And that's immune to political pressure because ultimately I get up every day knowing that my work serves Americans. That's who I work for. And that's what we do.”
2025-08-08 · Odd Lots · Mary Daly on Why Alaska Is a Leading Indicator for the US Economy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Know we do have many periods in our history where there's been pressure to move the interest rate because, of course, that would be part of the way the president or the administration or Congress would like to see the Fed go. But that's why the Fed is independent, because ultimately Congress gave us the monetary policy responsibilities so that we could make decisions that go past any particular administration, that are independent of political activities or political plans. So those are good things about the Fed. And ultimately, if you take a job at the Federal Reserve, and especially if you're in leadership of the Federal Reserve, Federal Reserve Bank President or Governor, you have to almost like tap a stone when you take the job as part of your oath, basically, that you're going to make monetary policy that serves all Americans and in a way that is not influenced by political leanings one way or another.”
2025-08-08 · Odd Lots · Mary Daly on Why Alaska Is a Leading Indicator for the US Economy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Exactly, I mean, just let's think of my time at the Fed so far. So we had 9-11. That was pretty uncomfortably uncertain, in traumatic at the same time. Then we had the global financial crisis. That is a tremendous period of uncertainty that lasted a number of years. Then there was the pandemic. That was not a very certain or clear time in our history. And so now we have uncertainty, but it is not something that we are unpracticed at. So I think that's why the important point to reinsure people on is we don't wait for clarity before we act. Because if we did wait for clarity before we act, we would be constantly behind.”
2025-08-08 · Odd Lots · Mary Daly on Why Alaska Is a Leading Indicator for the US Economy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It is indeed the story of central banking. If you were going to write a novel or do a whole nother podcast on central banking.”
2025-08-08 · Odd Lots · Mary Daly on Why Alaska Is a Leading Indicator for the US Economy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And I think that's natural. And my theory is that when there's so much change, people get worried. It doesn't matter if they think the change is even good. They just get worried. And they're worried that we're standing on one person put it this way. I'm worried we're standing on a precipitous cliff. I love the view because I'm looking out. I'm fine, but anything can happen. And so, I think that anything can happen peace makes them nervous, which is one of the reasons, another reason to come out and talk to people is when they talk to people, I say, here's what we're doing, and here's how we would handle something. If we did look a bit tippy in the economy, and that helps.”
2025-08-08 · Odd Lots · Mary Daly on Why Alaska Is a Leading Indicator for the US Economy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, this is not an uncommon disconnect, by the way. People have been historically, and not all the time, of course, but when they have concerns about the national economic progress, they will tell you in poor sentiment. And when there's a lot of transition, right? Think of the transformations we're going through. We're trying to bring down inflation, which has been tiring. Trying to think about bringing manufacturing and other things back to the United States, think about deploying a workforce that's domestically driven. Those are big transformations at a time when people are looking at some of their neighbors and saying, I see Joe buying less things. He didn't get a new car this year. He always gets a new car. That's a lot of pressure. And so, but their own personal situation, they're still able to go to the grocery. They can buy something for their kids. They can invest in repairing their home or going on a vacation. And so they feel okay. And they also feel personally secure in their job, but they're worried about the broader labor market.”
2025-08-08 · Odd Lots · Mary Daly on Why Alaska Is a Leading Indicator for the US Economy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I could type entire epic novels on Blackberry and I've got the thumb problem of the thumbs meet in the middle. I'm on a mini. It's not working.”
2025-08-08 · Odd Lots · Mary Daly on Why Alaska Is a Leading Indicator for the US Economy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We're just not seeing them come through in productivity. Some of the easy wins that a company might have done probably are behind us or, you know, you think, okay, do I need two copy editors or one? Well, if I have one copy editor in AI, I'm okay. But those are easy wins, right? The real transformational type of productivity things are for things we haven't even really thought of yet. I always use this example of thinking about the original iPhone or smartphone against the BlackBerry. So when it came out, I'm like, this is just a fancier Blackberry. And then ultimately, of course, I was totally wrong. This was a much more just transformational technology because we developed things on that technology.”
2025-08-08 · Odd Lots · Mary Daly on Why Alaska Is a Leading Indicator for the US Economy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source