Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago President Austan Goolsbee spoke in a Fox TV interview:
- Hard data on US economy still pretty solid
- If can get past this period of uncertainty, underlying strength of economy is still there
- Soft data looks very different from hard data
- Confidence is almost cratering
- Problem of tariffs is they are a supply shock
- Fear is if tariffs on imports jumps out of just imports and move into other costs, or people freak out and change behavior
- People don’t want to go back to the inflationary environment of 2021, 2022
This is interesting from Goolsbee. Hard data good vs. soft data bad. This thing is, by the time its data it already out of date, right? Things are moving fast and it seems to be a struggle to pick out any news that is good for business investment – the folks with the CAPEX wallets are screaming for some certainty and its hard to come by right now.
Will April 2 bring certainty? I said earlier I doubt it, there’ll be another set of announcements to wait for soon after. This is a great trading environment, but I worry for the folks on Main Street trying to run their businesses.
Has Goolsbee ever run a business?
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