美联储本周议息会议 amid 复杂经济信号

Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio, news.

This is Bloomberg Business Week Daily, reporting from the magazine that helps global leaders stay ahead with insight [music] on the people, companies, and trends shaping today's complex economy. Plus, global business, finance, and tech news as it happens. The Bloomberg Business Week daily podcast with Carol Masser and Tim Stenbec.

It is a busy week for central bankers. The Fed, which kicked off that two-day meeting today and its central bank peers in the Euro zone in Japan, will probably keep interest rates steady this week, opting to buy their time before potential further hikes. Fed chairman Kevin Worsh, who is extu [laughter] basically [snorts] doesn't like to do it. Let's just put it out there. On future moves, he will face a tricky test.

No doubt about it. At his post,

I was just chewing peanuts.

Test Jude. You were just chewing peanuts or what to say? I don't know what I don't know what's going on.

Mulling over. No, he doesn't like to do it. He doesn't want to do it. He probably won't though offer much insight about what's going to come in December, but he may also not want to sway market bets away from the current expectation for a hike. It's an interesting position to be in.

Uh interesting and probably not enviable to a lot of people. Well, with more on this week's Fed decision and how a Federal Reserve is navigating an economy as complex as any time outside of a crisis, which is what Bloomberg's Ender Curran wrote about Curran joins us, Bloomberg News Federal Reserve and economy reporter from our Washington DC bureau. What does make this economy so complicated?

Well, there are so many kind of pushpull factors happening all at once. You know, you've got the housing markets frozen, but house prices remain high. You have bond yields soaring but stock markets keep hitting new highs or at least staying high. You've got consumer spending strong but several indicators on consumer sentiment in the doldrums. You have unemployment low. You have wage gains hard to get. And of course, you've got the AI story which either is going to be a productivity revolution or is going to be an end of humanity depending how you want to read it.

Okay. Thanks, Enda. That's all we need.

I'll come come back later. But it's it's a couple [laughter] ones.

Or maybe you won't. Exactly. But just to be clear, I mean, it's not that the economy hasn't seen complicated times before. Of course, it has, especially dur especially during crisis. But right now, there are a lot of conflicting signals, you know, selling the opposite direction. And in the middle of it all is the Fed. They have to decide whether or not to lift up borrowing costs to keep a lid on inflation without hurting, if you want to call it, the nonAI part of the economy.

And that's the that's the hard part here.

Well, and is it a good US economy or is it just good for some? because I keep feeling like Tim and I have guests on and they're like it's a good economy. Look at the growth. Look at the spending and look at earnings.

Yeah, aggregate data points to a strong economy. I mean GDP growth is strong, corporate profits are strong, consumer spending is strong. So those are all good headlines, but as you say, of course, if you drill into the data, you start to get a slightly different picture on it. In particular, take retail spending or consumer spending. Yes, the headlines are good there, but a lot of people will tell you that it's the higher income earners who are doing the spending.

Lower income workers are feeling the pain there. You talk about corporate profits, you know, big companies doing well. Smaller businesses will tell you that they uh cost of a loan at their local bank is expensive for them and of course they they face um rising insurance costs and rising uh cost for buying the material that they need. So, everyone has a different story on it. It is a strong economy but the I think the unifying narrative among everyone household and business is that costs are high and they're increasing and that's I think where the tension is at the moment.

Uh where are the costs highest for consumers? I I one of our regulars gets in touch with me all the time and he says, "You guys talk about high oil prices and high gas prices too much because the data show that that's not hitting Americans paychecks or is not hitting American spending as as hard as you know you guys and he's meaning the media are are making it out to be. On the one hand, you have the iPhone duo, this $2,000 iPhone selling out, you know, on its first day that it's for sale.

On the other hand, you have so many consumers complaining about basic costs. Just help us make sense of those two different economies. Yeah. Well, like I say, this is this is the it goes back to the conflicting signals I spoke about earlier. I mean, if you'd been if you had stopped someone in the street in January and said, "Look, Australia moves will be closed and the world will go through an energy shock." Uh, you would say, "Okay, well, surely that will slow the economy down."

But here we are, growth is accelerating. We'll probably get GDP this week showing even stronger figures. So, that absolutely is the case. But nonetheless, though, inflation figures for September showed an acceleration in broadbased price pressures. uh not just energy related, we're seeing some spill over into um merchandise goods. One example, toy prices increased by a record. Um that's for different reasons, but maybe tariffs are part of that story as well.

And with the energy story, by the way, um yes, for all the reasons we've just spoke about, it hasn't slowed spending or the economy the way you might have thought, but it is increasingly spilling over in terms of cost. And diesel, for example, is a channel there. You hear farmers complaining about it, and if farmers complain about it, then food food delivery costs will go up and the price of food will go up. So there's an it can't be ruled out completely that the energy story won't spill over in the months ahead.

And just 30 seconds here and I mean you have a a line in your column, your essay, most concerning of all some of the most important economic developments of 2026 appear potentially to be beyond the Fed's control like the war in the Middle East that has caused higher energy prices. And that's kind of the tricky wick here. Just quickly,

yeah, that's really it's a problem. Like take the AI boom, shortage of chips, big demand for chips, setting up the cost of iPhones. Obviously, interest rates won't really impact the cost of iPhones or solve the AI boom. So, that's that's part of the challenge facing the Fed. [music] Stay with us. More from Bloomberg Business Week Daily coming up after this. [music] The old asset manager Harrison Street recently out with a note and here's what they said.

Real estate recovery underway. outcomes are becoming increasingly divergent across sectors, markets, assets, operators, and capital structures. Entering 2026, many investors anticipated declining interest rates, accelerating transaction activity, and a faster normalization of capital markets. Instead, economic growth has remained resilient. Inflation has presumed has proven more persistent. Yes, indeed. And geopolitical uncertainty has increased.

It's amazing.

So, you can make plans, but you know

what do they say about make plans? [laughter] We are so delighted to have back with us Christopher Merrill. He's co-founder and global chief executive at the alternative asset manager. It is Harrison Street Asset Management. They focus a lot on real estate. They've got 110 billion in assets under management. He's here in studio. Toeer, good to have you here with Tim and me. It is funny, right? We enter a year, we think this and then we get that.

Um, how's that impacting the plays for you and the opportunities?

For sure. Well, it's great to see you guys again.