Why America’s Inflation Problem Isn’t Going Away

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on cargo in the straight of Mouss, finally IBM plunged 25% after pre-enouncing earnings

that missed expectations. It was its worst day of all time. Okay. What else is happening? Inflation cooled to an annual rate of 3.5% in June, which was lower than economists had predicted.

Consumer prices fell 0.4% between May and June. That was the largest one-month decrease since April 2020. Much of that drop was driven by lower energy prices after the US Iran ceasefire. East fears of supply disruptions, but that relief may be short-lived. Last week, of course, President Trump declared the ceasefire over.

And yesterday, the US launched a new round of strikes on Iranian targets. Brent crewed has since climbed back to around $85 a barrel, raising the prospect that energy prices and inflation could move higher again. So joining us to discuss this inflation report. We are speaking with Mark Zandy, Chief Economist at Moody's Analytics.

Mark, great to see you. Thank you for joining us on the show. Inflations come down. We were at 4.2, which was really high. Down to 3.5, still pretty high, but lower than expected.

“I think the bigger question though is how much of that was because oil prices went lower in June.”

And I asked that because oil prices are, of course, rising again, which makes me think maybe this is not here to stay. Yeah, so when you said the inflation is easing to 3.5%. You know, it is easing, it's down, but it's still awfully high on comfortably high. You know, as everyone knows, the Fed's target is 2% inflation. That's kind of what we take as being a comfortable rate of inflation.

And I think under what I'll call underlying inflation, kind of abstracting from all the vagaries of the data. By the way, in this report, there was a lot of noise. I don't know if you notice, but it's a very noisy report. And a lot of anomalies in the data, and I'm not sure how much to read into it. But, you know, extracting from that, I think underlying inflation is kind of 3 to 3.5%.

Somewhere in there, again, uncontrollably high. And that's abstracting from the swings and energy prices related to the war. Which obviously, you know, added a lot to inflation, you know, coming into the war back. And the spring early summer, and is now detracting from inflation.

And this is after a number of years of very high inflation.

In fact, the inflation's been above the Fed's target for five years. And so the cost of living is extraordinarily high. It reflects, you know, the cumulative effect of those, those high rates of inflation. And I think people just are feeling very uncomfortable with that. And hopefully, the Iran War moves in the right direction here and begins to obey.

But as you point out, that's now a new risk.

“I think the big question is, is this going to be the trend?”

Will we keep seeing the number go down? And that's what I'm trying to understand from this report. Does this tell us that inflation is now headed in the right direction, specifically down? Or is this a blip? Because what we know about last month is that, you know, specifically when we look at the energy markets,

people seem to think the war was over. Now here we are in July, prices are going back up. People seem to think, no, it's not because the president told us as much. I mean, obviously a lot depends on what the president does or doesn't do. And whether the straight reopens and we get oil flowing through or not.

I mean, I think the, there's no way to know for sure, obviously given the ups and downs and all around here. You know, I think the most likely scenario is that the incentives here for the president, the Iranians regime to figure this out and open up the straight over time and get oil flowing, get oil prices down are pretty high and that they will figure that out. But obviously I say that with no confidence, this can go in a boatload of directions.

And if we just assume I'm right, oil prices come down and inflation continues to come in. It'll be a, it'll take time. It's not going to come in fast.

“It's going to be a sticky, you know, I think that there's a lot of other things going on here.”

You know, artificial intelligence is juicing up inflation, the immigration policy is juicing up inflation. There's just a lot of slew of things going on that suggests that while inflation will come in, assuming the Iran word sticks roughly to script. It's not going to come in fast. It's going to come in slow and sticky.

And it might not be a couple of three years before we get back to anything we all feel comfortable with. Do you expect that three and a half. Well, it'll go up from three and a half over the next few months. It'll go down, I mean, what directionally why do you think we're headed? I think we're directionally lower.

Again, assuming that, you know, the Iran word doesn't go off the rails here in oil prices stay where they roughly where they are. Let's say, 80, 85 bucks a barrel. Then I do think we will see it come in. Because the other thing to consider on an inflation that's really fun to mental is the, is the job market. You know, that, that goes to wages and cost of labor.

And that is the single most important driving force of inflation.

And right now, the labor market is soft. You know, we saw that in the last jobs report. We're not creating a whole lot of jobs and there's a lot of slack in the labor market that's continuing to increase. That's putting downward pressure on wages. Wage growth is below the rate of inflation and slowing across all different wage groups.

“And that, you know, you should ultimately drive the rate of inflation lower.”

But again, that's a process that takes time. That doesn't happen in a month or two or three. That happens in the year two or three. Just looking at the U.S. inflation rate compared to other nations. We currently have the highest inflation rate in the G7, which is quite interesting.

Because it seemed as though we were kind of the most sheltered from what was happening to oil prices. As a result of the Iran war. But now I guess that's not really the case. I mean, what do you make of the fact that we're actually in a worse spot now than many of our peers? Yeah, I think that goes to the fact that most other countries provide subsidies or regulate the price of energy.

They don't let it pass through. You know, the Europeans don't let it pass through. Some countries do, you know, some Asian countries, but most don't. The U.S. is very different in that. As soon as the oil prices go up, our cost of gasoline diesel jet fuel goes immediately up.

Now, there's problems with that. And that is, you know, we're all struggling with lower purchasing power. Real incomes are declining and it's hurting the economy. But the benefit of that is that we adjust a lot more quickly. We pull back on our driving, you know, we fly less.

You know, we become more efficient in the use of trucks that deliver packages to our door.

The rest of the world, they're ultimately being passed through.

But it just takes a long, a much longer period of time for that to occur. The other thing that might be going on to help explain. And this is a little more problematic is lack of competition. You know, competition in different industries has eroded over time.

Or are able to hope they're pricing for longer in the face of weakening demand or slower costs of doing business.

“And so that lack of competition, which is, I think, occurred over the years and become more pronounced.”

Now, maybe it may be also playing a role in the higher rates of inflation that we're seeing here. The fact that maybe why inflation, other reason why inflation might be more sticky here. Because businesses are under less pressure to cut prices because of the lack of competition or the less lessening of competition. Kevin Worsh, new Fed chess, spoke to Congress. He said the CPI dropped is not mean, quote, mission accomplished on inflation.

It seems to be a lot more hawkish than people expected. What do you make of his statements? What do you think this means for interest rates going forward? Yeah, I've been surprised at how, as you say, hawkish he has been, you know, going back to the FOMC meeting, the policy making committee meeting. He used the words price stability several times, you know, and he convinced investors that he's serious about that. If you look at inflation expectations and what the fund investors think of inflation will be in the future, they came back down and back up to where they were prior to the Iran war.

And so they're convinced that he's going to work hard to keep inflation down.

That's his primary focus. And I take great deal of solace in that, because I, you know, six months ago when we were having these conversations, I was much worried about the Fed's independence and that whoever the Fed chair was going to be, could buckle under the weight of the pressure from the president who says he wants lower interest rates. But I feel less worried about that.

Well, we'll have to see, you know, obviously there's, we'll have to see how this plays out, and there's a lot to be learned. But so far, so good, and I think that feels very good. Now, does mean the potential for higher rates? I mean markets are now anticipating, last I look, might get to come in today with these better inflation numbers. I look, two rate increases, quarter point each time.

And so the investors are expecting that that hawkish rhetoric will translate into higher interest rates. And, you know, the one of the side effects of more hawkish Fed chair is, you know, you're going to have higher rates for longer.

“But I think ultimately, you know, the key thing here is Fed independence.”

And I feel much better about that in the, in the wake of all the things that Kevin Worsh has done since he's been appointed. Do you have a view on on on on the poll for interest rates for the year? How do I mean, this seems to be like the biggest question for investors will rates go up or down or will they stay flat? And people have been debating this since the beginning of the year. Everyone seem to agree that we're going to come down heading into the year.

That's changed now. Do you have a view on that debate? Yeah, of course, I've got lots of views. Yeah, even on the World Cup, I've got a view. So, or World of Phillies, what do I mean, series?

Yeah, I've got a view. It's a bit outside of consensus. I don't think the Fed's going to raise or lower rates.

“I think policy will remain unchanged because I do think, you know, they have two mandates.”

One is low and stable inflation. And that's what we've been focused on. That would call for higher rates. But the other mandate is full employment. And there the job market, in my humble opinion, is soft.

It's weak. I mean, we're not creating any jobs. All the jobs we're creating is in the healthcare sector. It's very narrow. If you lose your job, you're in big trouble because you can't get hired.

Back hiring rates are very low. The share of the unemployed, they're unemployed for long periods of time is now rising and very high. Wage growth is very weak. And so I worry that there's slack in the labor market. You don't see it in the unemployment rate because labor force is collapsing.

People are leaving the labor force. And if the labor force participation rate has just remained unchanged over the past year, the unemployment rate would be 5%. And we'd all be talking very differently if it was 5%. And so I think the job market is very soft.

And I think ultimately that will convince the committee not to raise rates. But, you know, like many things like which ways this we're going to go. I say this with low levels of confidence because, you know, obviously there's a lot of uncertainty here. Right. It seems like the question is as usual, which one is more of a problem?

I think I tend to err on the side of the inflation problem is more of a problem. Because I'm personally very worried about what we're seeing in terms of the Iran situation. But I take your point and you said this recently in the social media. You said that the commentary on the employment report for June was, "much too dismissive of how weak the numbers looked."

And so I guess we find ourselves in the same position that the Fed always finds itself head,

Well, although we either pushed into this really bad place, right? I mean, because of policy. I mean, because of the tariffs, because of immigration, because of the war, that leads to weaker growth and higher inflation. That's stagnation.

This is a stagnation environment. And what do you do with that at the Fed?

“Do you focus on inflation or do you focus on growth?”

And it's a very tough spot to be. And that's the situation that's written. My sense is they punt. And they say, "I can't figure out which one to focus on. I'm not changing rates, but I hear you."

I mean, at the end of the day, push comes the shove. They've got to focus on inflation.

Now, I think the deciding factor, ultimately on that, will be inflation expectations.

If inflation expectations stay down, then they may be able to get away without raising rates, because inflation should come in. If inflation expectations start to rise, say, you know, right now on inflation expectations are based on the expectation of the Fed's going to actually raise rates.

Now, let's say that they say, "Okay, we're not raising rates." So, inflation expectations start to rise. Therefore, they got to raise rates. I mean, I know that's mind numbing, but that's the way this all works. It does make rise.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. All right, Mark's Andy, Chief of Economist at Moody's Analytics. Mark, appreciate your time. Thank you. Thank you. After the break, Wall Street banks make a killing again.

And for even more markets insights, you can subscribe to my weekly newsletter simply put.profgmedia.com. Four, five, eight, nine, eight, nine, nine, nine, nine, nine, nine, nine, nine, nine. Again, listen, I'm on my, I'm on my, I'm thinking about it. But does anybody want that?

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Now on the Vox Media Podcast Network. This is the downside. We're back with Prophecy Markets. Five of America's biggest banks just reported earnings, and they all delivered the same message. Wall Street is booming.

Jamie Morgan beat on the top and bottom lines with CEO Jamie Diamond announcing record revenues across every major business. Goldman Sachs posted one of its strongest quarters in history with profits up nearly 80% year over year. And back of America, Wells Fargo and City Group all topped expectations as well.

Driving those results was a revival in deal making, including $500 million in fees from the largest IPO of all time.

SpaceX. But investors didn't reward the banks equally. Goldman popped nearly 9% on the news. Jamie Morgan and Bank of America both rose about 2% while Wells Fargo and City Group fell 2% and 5% respectively. So here to tell us what Wall Street's blowout quarter means for the markets and for the economy.

Saul, thanks for joining us on Prophecy Markets. Blowout earnings across the board.

According to Jamie Diamond, it's quote, "getting close to as good as it gets for JB Morgan and for basically everyone.

Why is it such a good time to be a bank right now?" Right now, you have almost a perfect storm of good economic backdrop. A resilient economy, high real rates, which is positive for the net interest margins of banks. And you're seeing a resurgence of deal making activity, asset prices are going higher. So you have a backdrop that is supportive of a wide wide range of businesses, everything from traditional banking,

which is benefiting from good loan growth, good net interest income growth, good net interest margins.

“But what was exceptional, I guess, was most exceptional, I think, about the results.”

This quarter, where the capital markets business is, deal making is back in spades.

So this quarter investment banking fees for the five companies, you highlighted, grew anywhere from 30 to 55 percent year on year.

And it's a cross product, IPO activity, which has been historically low, has rebounded. And at the same time, M&A activities have been strong. Data issuance is historically elevated. And then on top of that, what may have surprised more than that is on the trading side. So banks intermediate, trades, they finance institutional investors.

And those businesses are also booming, especially equities, which was up for those banks anywhere from 45 to 90 percent year on year.

“And so it's almost the perfect storm where traditional banking capital markets businesses are doing well.”

And it's reflective of a good economic backdrop with high rates, higher rates than we've had in the past. And a lot of deal making activity going on. So just to go through some of these things that are going right, you've got the loan growth, you've got the phenomenal equities trading,

which I mean, it basically sounds like clients, investors are trading stocks more than double than they were in some cases.

Or sorry, close to double what they were trading from a year ago. So that's booming and I assume a lot of that is the volatility that's happening in the markets that are often increasing trading. M&A, the deal making, and then of course the IPO's, the most significant of which was space acts, which all five of these banks were underwriters of my question.

“How important was that SpaceX IPO to these earnings?”

And how important will these future IPOs, namely open AI, and anthropic G to these earnings as well? Or are they less important? Well, I mean, if you look at it in an isolation, it's not, they're not huge numbers relative to the total revenue numbers. So even even if we don't know the exact fees collected by each individual bank, but it helps the equity capital markets business, but that's a pretty small proportion of the overall revenue stream.

Now, don't go me wrong. You've seen IPO activity more broadly, rebound, and that is helping investment banking fees generally. And you do have additional IPOs, large IPOs that could be coming which provide an additional tailwind possible later this year, and in the early next year. So it's helpful. It's not the biggest driver that said there are, you know, there are other, there's a sort of a multiplier effect, also from some of these transactions. You know, you meant a lot of billionaires, for example, with something like SpaceX, and that provides opportunities for your wealth management business.

There are trading opportunities around that. There's going to be index rebalances around, you know, SpaceX, which forces investors to reposition their portfolio. So your market-making activity increases. So looking at the IPO fees and the investment banking fees and isolation on these deals, probably tells you only part of the story. There's sort of a multiplier effect on a lot of these transactions, whether they're IPOs, or, you know, M&A transactions as well, where you have a lot of that same phenomenon going on, where it helps you in multiple of your capital markets businesses.

So you're seeing that multiplier effect really take hold right now. >> Might be a crude way to put it, but when stuff happens in the capital markets, that's a good thing for banks. One of the things that is happening that David Solomon pointed out was the AI infrastructure build out, which has been a boon for the company he pointed out, all of these data centers that are being built and financed.

You wouldn't immediately think of Wall Street. Why have they benefited from this build out?

“>> Is this sort of a similar answer to the prior answer? There's sort of a multiplier dynamic, right?”

You think about AI, there's sort of the first order or first magnitude is on the financing side.

So you have banks lending more. You have more debt issuance. You have more debt capital markets issuance. You have sort of an economic multiplier effect. It's not just the AI infrastructure companies. And other firms that benefit from that. And there's financing. There's lending. There's debt issuance. There are opportunities to land and then distribute them to some of those products for your wealth management clients. And on top of that, now you have IPL activity going. So, you know, there's a tell when there you have wealth management opportunities for folks who are moving into billionaires.

So, there's, again, there's, you know, there's things about banks. They provide, you know, a store of value with wealth management products and deposits.

“When there's a lot of value creation, all of those things benefit. And I think with the AI build out,”

it flows back into banks, whether there are investment banks or traditional banks in numerous ways. Jamie Diamonds, who, he said, that this is good as it gets. He's late to follow that coming up with a slightly more cautious statement. He said, quote, "We just don't know how long it's going to last." What could end or run out for these banks? What should they be worried about at this point? It is hard to envision, you know, continued growth off of these, off of the base run. And I think that that, that it could be, be ahead when for, eventually,

be ahead when for some of these companies and for the stocks that continue to do well.

“I think the other thing I would just mention is a little bit more mundane, and you saw it with Wells Fargo.”

We talked about loan growth being good. That is driving me that interesting, come, which for traditional banks, this is the biggest revenue item. But if you start to see deposit cost pressure, higher funding costs, we had now, you know, one rate high built into the forward curve.

Banks are growing. There's a little bit more competition. If that starts to eat away at the net interest income growth in the second half of the year in the next year,

that's also something that could derail the positive thesis. And again, you kind of saw that with Wells Fargo today because that was one of the concerns that people had was funding cost and what it meant. What it means for net interest income growth. Just one final question before we let you go, Jamie Diamond had some interesting things to say about JP Morgan's use of AI. He said that in some discrete areas AI had been used to quote reduced jobs by 30 or 40%. He then sort of amended that he said that those employees were offered jobs elsewhere, but the net net is he saying AI is reducing their reliance on people in certain areas.

I'd be interested to get your reactions to those comments and also this idea that AI could be used on Wall Street to one replace people and to increase profits. It's a fair question, but I think that was in response to a question I asked of Jamie about AI. Look, I think banks are in the early innings of their adopted use cases for AI. I think they're generally been focused on efficiency enhancements and cyber risks and and fraud. But I mean, the AI tools are advancing so rapidly that, I think companies generally not just banks have to look at whether existing organization structures.

Make sense and what the right way to be organized and what the right head count levels are. I mean, you saw in late February block and I know the blocks are very different than JP Morgan, but they cut 40% of their head count.

Basically, arguing that given the advancements of AI tools, the way they're organized should be very different.

And I think is banks look at their organizational structures and their head counts there. There is the possibility that in some cases, you know, there could be, you know, there could be changes in how head count is are constituted and what the right and I think companies generally in banks, specifically will have to think about what the right way to be organized is in how many employees they need. That's not to say you're going to see massive head count reductions, but it is something that I think all companies will have to deal with.

AI just generally speaking, so I do think management teams will have to think about how they, you know, how they frame these discussions and and you know what the right level is and how they communicate that.

But it is a, it is a potentially, you know, something that could really enhance efficiency.

But exactly how it plays out in terms of organizational structure, right levels of personnel, right levels of personnel in which groups of the business that that is all, you know, going to have to play out.

“You know, over time, I think one final thing here Ed that I mentioned is that Jamie does argue that, you know, this will all get completed away. I think that's his argument that, you know, you know, some of the benefits will, you know,”

in a competitive sector will, will get completed away. And I agree with that to a point because, you know, I do think a competitive market that happens, but excess returns can last the long time and, you know, those sort of first movers could have, you know, significant advantages here.

All right, so on my team is head of US financials research at HSBC. Saul, we appreciate your time any time.

“As we wrap up, a quick word on the CPI report that we just discussed with Mark. First things first, let's recognize this is good news.”

I would never come on here and celebrate higher inflation just to say I told you so inflation is the fuel of the affordability crisis. It is the difference between eating and going hungry for millions of Americans. So anytime the number goes down, that is a good thing. And no, I don't think that the BLS is lying. Having said that, it would be premature to celebrate this. Because while the number did go down, what we also know is that the reason it went down is because last month oil prices went down as investors anticipated a swift end to the Iran war, which as of this week has officially been proven very wrong.

“The memorandum of understanding is over. According to the president, ceasefire is over. The straighter for moves is blocked once again and low and behold, here we are in July and oil prices are again rising.”

We're now up to $85 a barrel. That is up 20% from the prices we experienced in June. The prices which were, of course, reflected in that CPI report that we're now all expected to celebrate.

So, no, this isn't a great report. It's good in so far as it's a temporary sigh of relief, but it's bad in so far as it is a temporary sigh of relief. This is most likely a blick in the long story of the Iran war. The war that many had said was coming to an end, but that many must now admit is only just beginning. On a brighter but unrelated note, I will end this show with one final message. It's coming home. Okay, that's it for today. This episode was produced by Claire Miller and Alison Weiss and engineered by Benjamin Spencer.

Our video editor is Brad Williams, our research team is Dan Chalon, Chris Nodonahue and Mia Solverio and our social producer is Jake McPherson. Thank you for listening to Proftly Markets from Proftly Media. If you liked what you heard, give us a follow. I'm Alison, I will see you tomorrow.