Welcome to the Dispatch Podcast. This is Declan Garvey, editor of the Morning Dispatch.

And today we're going to talk about the economy.

President Biden made economic growth, the central theme of his State of the Union address earlier this week.

And for the moment, at least things are looking pretty good on that front.

Gross domestic product data for 2022 came in stronger than expected.

Unemployment is at its lowest level in over 50 years.

Inflation is finally starting to slow a little bit.

But there are certainly some storm clouds on the horizon.

And joining us today to talk through some of those storm clouds is Jason Furman,

professor of economic policy at Harvard University, and a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics.

He also has over a decade of experience in Washington serving for eight years as a top economic advisor to President Barack Obama.

And the last four of those years were as chairman of Obama's Council of Economic Advisors.

What I really appreciate about Jason though is that he's one of the straightest shooters I've talked to in my economic reporting over the past several years.

He doesn't stretch the data to fit any partisan narrative and has been willing to raise the alarm about even democratic programs when he thinks it's necessary.

Including he was one of the first people to warn about impending inflation months before it really began to dominate the conversation a couple of years ago.

So glad to be with you.

So I want to start, you know, we're recording this on Thursday February 9th.

It were two days out from President Biden's State of the Union address.

It was a state of a union that focused primarily on the economy.

It was the first thing that he mentioned after he welcomed everybody.

And I think that's something that, you know, wouldn't have been necessarily expected six months ago, three months ago,

to kind of that he would be in a position where he could spend so much of the speech on the economy and really drive that message.

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