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The week that was, of course, because it's Friday.

We'll talk about measuring this economy as well and then artificial intelligence and the law.

From American public media, this is Marketplace.

In Los Angeles, I'm Kai Rizal. It is Friday, the 23rd day of June. Good as always to have you along.

Everybody there was, if you ask me, just a hint of an early summer slowdown in economic news this week.

Punctuated, it should be said by a couple of highlights. So discuss them. We will.

Katherine Rampels at the Washington Post, Gina Smileyx at the New York Times. Say you too.

Hey, Kai. Hey, Kai.

So let's see. Katherine, I want to start with you and I want to start with Chair Powell on the Hill this week for two days of testimony.

And here's what I want to ask you. It seems to me that he keeps saying the same thing over and over and over again.

And yet nobody is really listening. Do you suppose he feels like he's banging his head against the wall?

Perhaps I wouldn't blame him if he feels a little bit frustrated right now.

The Fed is trying to walk a very fine line, right? They don't want to tip the economy into recession, but they want to stamp out.

To stamp out inflation and convincing the public markets, lawmakers, consumers, et cetera, that they will get that balance right, I think, is really challenging.

So Chair Powell keeps saying, look, we are going to keep raising interest rates just because we paused recently.

So it doesn't mean that you should read into that that we are done with the fight against inflation and that's sort of what what he would, you know, what the ideal scenario is one where they actually don't have to raise rates that much, but markets think they will.

You know, because then that can do the work of rate hikes for them, essentially, but that's not where we are. We're sort of in the other scenario where he keeps saying we're going to raise rates more and markets don't believe him.

So Gina, the note I have for this next question says why is inflation and clearly I got interrupted when I was writing myself that note. So I'm going to wing it here. I'm going to ask you this.

Why is inflation number one going down so fast the past like six months, but but now seems to be taking so long to go down if that makes any sense.

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