Good morning! Welcome to Axios Today, it's Thursday, July 27th. I'm Felix Salmon in

Vanilla Boudue. Today on the show, what more AI means for low wage work? For first, the

Fed came out with its 11th rate hike yesterday. That's today's one big day.

There's some potentially good economic news. Yesterday, the Fed's staff economists said that

given the recent resilience of the economy, they are no longer forecasting a recession,

certainly not this year. But the Fed also raised interest rates again by a quarter of a point,

bringing them to the highest level in 22 years. Here to help us dig deeper on all this is Axios

senior economics reporter Courtney Brown. You literally aren't even old enough to remember last

time. Great for this high. I mean, I was alive. I was just playing with Barbie dolls and what have

you, but I was definitely alive. So the first question talking of which is this economy being kept

afloat by the sheer strength of Barbie ticket sales? By Barbie ticket sales, by Taylor Swift

concerts, Beyonce concert, straight concerts, there is a lot of that type of activity that suggests

that the American consumer is doing really well and that underpins an economy that's been far

more resilient than even the highest economists of the land that the Federal Reserve were expecting.

But inflation is still really high and they're really concerned about that and that explains why

they decided to raise interest rates once more yesterday. They're worried that the economy is

doing too well that we're spending too much money. Rate hikes will maybe slow that down, but

from what you're saying, there's not a lot of sign that 11 successive rate hikes have had much

effect on that front. There are definitely sectors where it's very obvious that the Fed interest rate

hikes have made an impact housing for one, even though activities starting to rebound,

activities still well below levels it was before the Fed started hiking rates, mortgage rates are

obviously really high as a function of the Fed's rate hikes. But yeah, they are still concerned that

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