How a former Fed vice chair would approach rate cuts
The Indicator from Planet Money
NPR
4.7 • 9.5K Ratings
🗓️ 9 December 2025
⏱️ 10 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hey everyone, it's Darien Woods here. Just quickly before we start the show, I want to take a minute to talk about public media. |
| 0:06.8 | This is what makes the indicator and other NPR podcasts special. |
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| 0:28.4 | Just this year, we've done episodes on why the trade war is missing a referee on the stock market |
| 0:34.0 | and the magic of diversification on the surging cost of healthcare for pets. |
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| 1:07.8 | NPR. |
| 1:08.2 | NPR. |
| 1:10.3 | Thank you. NPR. This is the indicator from planet money. I'm Darym Woods. And I'm Stephen Mesaaha. |
| 1:22.5 | Because of the recent government shutdown, a lot of economic indicators have been delayed or even cancelled. |
| 1:28.6 | That is troubling for decision makers. The chair of the Federal Reserve, Jerome Powell, |
| 1:33.1 | recently put it like this. If you're driving in the fog, you slow down. And so if the central |
| 1:38.2 | bank is a car slowly driving in the fog? Well, this week it's hit a T intersection. The Federal Reserve is meeting today |
| 1:46.6 | and tomorrow to decide what to do. On one side is the way of high interest rates. You might call this |
| 1:53.8 | Hawks Highway, a steeper incline of higher borrowing costs that will try to finally vanquish inflation. |
| 2:01.4 | But the other direction is Doves Drive. |
| 2:04.5 | That's a gentle downward slope promising lower interest rates |
... |
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