Office Hours Recap 7/29/2022

Office Hours is an hour long Zoom call we have on Friday’s from 2-3pm ET. The event is exclusive to Epsilon Theory members and is a great way to hear Ben’s thoughts on markets, politics, and current events. Every Monday I post a brief recap of the previous OH. This is not a transcription of the call and doesn’t cover everything. But it does outline the main conversations we had.

Before this was posted on the ET Forum, but we’re moving it to the front page so more people can see the recap and understand the opportunities of Office Hours.

These are the major topics and ideas we discussed during the 7/29/2022 Office Hours as well as some of the biggest takeaways. If you have something you want to add to the conversation, let us know in the comments and join us next time.

Chart Topping:

If you haven’t stopped by lately, you may not know that for the past few weeks Office Hours has been a multimedia presentation. Ben has been presenting charts that give a real visual representation of inflation trends and other trends. It’s great for those of us who need a visual element to understand some of these topics. They’re also a great way to see historical trends and similarities to current problems. Some of these charts will appear on the Forum or on notes, but most will remain unique to Office Hours.

Pack Questions:

We started out the call by addressing some questions that were sent in by Mkahn22.

Question one: Did the Fed/Powell truly believe in “average” inflation as a target and, if so, will it/he now want to run inflation below 2% to bring the “average” down to 2% or was “average” inflation just a cover story to do what it/he wanted, which was to run inflation over 2%?

Question two: Why has, as far as I can tell, no one in the financial press asked Powel about this? Is it because inflation is so far away from 2% now that it seems silly to even discuss it? If yes, then do you think it will become an issue when/if inflation falls, or will the financial press help carry Powell’s water for him and conveniently forget about “average” inflation?

The short answers – Yes to all! It’s been a cover story for years. The goal was never to have inflation at 2%, but rather to have that as the target. If they do manage a miracle and hit 2% then they can point to it and say it was what they intended all along.

If you have questions you really want Ben to answer, you can always send me a message on the Forum or comment on that week’s Office Hours post.

We’d love to hear your thoughts on these ideas and hope that you’ll join us next time. If you haven’t already, sign up to access the Forum and Office Hours.