Hi, thank you for joining us. I'm Norbert Michelle. I'm Director of Cato's Center for Monetary and Financial Alternatives, and I'm here with my colleague.

Hi, everyone. My name is Jackadia. I'm a research fellow, also working with Norbert at the Center for Monetary and Financial Alternatives here at the Cato Institute.

We're here today to discuss the Fed and monetary policy in general after Norbert was been a very tumultuous summer in our area of expertise here.

It started, of course, with constant attacks by the president on Fed Chair Powell.

It led to a very strange construction site visit by the president, which then led into the attempted firing of Fed Governor Lisa Cook to the nomination of Stephen Martin to the Fed board all the way up until the September rate cut decision.

This podcast is going to come out seemingly in line with another rate cut decision.

So I thought it was a good time for us to kind of step in and discuss where the Fed is, where monetary policy is, and things like that.

Yes, yes.

Do you want to start with a specific piece of it or do you want me to go?

Yeah, I mean, maybe we can start here.

The Fed has been in the news cycle so much.

You would almost expect things to kind of have been worse with monetary policy

than it's actually been. For the most part, the way the rate cut decisions have gone and

how monetary policy has basically been conducted since earlier this year, you wouldn't have

known really that it was really part of the media cycle this much.

You know, kind of maybe where we can start is by clarifying, you know, our position has been,

yet yes, monetary policy is very important, but it isn't the sole determinant of prices and economic output.

After this summer, do you still hold on to that view?

Oh, yeah, definitely.

You know, we deal with that a lot.

I bet that you, Jay, I bet before you were here, you didn't realize how much of this stuff we get from people, you know, sending this emails and calling and on social media saying that, oh, the Fed, you know, the Fed's all powerful. The Fed controls this. They just need to do X or Y or Z as if they can just do whatever they want and make the economy look like whatever they want it to look like. No, that's completely right. I coming in, you know, my background, of course, coming from the PhD and coming from academia was, hey, this is another institution in the macroeconomy.

You model them, and then you kind of move on with your life, right?

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