NPR.

The U.S. economy is a little paradoxical at the moment.

Unemployment is relatively low, and yet people are saying it's a terrible time to find a job. The share

market slumped in the first month of the war in Iran, and yet stocks are still way higher than a year

ago. Americans are feeling glum about the economy, and yet labor productivity is up.

It's times like this when it's helpful to get multiple perspectives.

Like, how about two presidents of the Federal Reserve banking system?

Regular listeners will know that there are 12 regional Fed banks around the country,

and Austin Goolsby leads the Chicago Fed.

Austin comes from academia and says he doesn't have a bias for higher or lower interest

rates, that he's neither a hawk nor a dove.

I always said, I don't aspire to be a bird of any kind. I just wanted to be one of the

data dogs.

Beth Amick says she's also a data dog. She used to work on Wall Street and now is the president of the Cleveland Fed,

which covers Ohio and parts of Kentucky, Pennsylvania and West Virginia. And Cleveland has a bit

of a rivalry with Chicago that was apparent right as we were getting the mic set up.

Does Austin need to fix his hair or his hair? Okay. Austin is bald if you didn't know.

That was a kind of low blow.

Now I'm not going to have mercy.

I was going to have mercy on Cleveland and now there's going to be none.

And it was tensions between the academic Austin Gulsby and the markets-oriented Beth

Hammack that we were keen to hear more about.

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