Today we hear from the U.S. Federal Reserve. We can expect no change to overnight fed funds. As pointed yesterday by Dr. Paul Brewbaker, the economist who spoke here at the MBA Hawai’i conference, the Fed can only shoot at one target at a time: inflation or employment. They have to pick one and have picked inflation. So far so good. Besides that, he tore into tariffs, and their result on what individuals and countries do in response to them as evidenced by what happened during the first Trump Administration: China moving its manufacturing facilities to non-tariff countries to circumvent the tariffs. But back to the Fed… Industry vet Brent Nyitray observed, “Meanwhile, inflation is almost to the target and Fed is running out of excuses to keep rates 100 basis points too tight. The Fed is making a bet that inflation will spike from tariffs, and that will dominate all other economic effects. At this point, they are not being cautious; they are being obstinate.” (Today’s podcast can be found here and this week’s is sponsored by TRUE. TRUE cuts time to critical loan events from days to minutes by using background AI workers to instantly validate data and automate underwriting decisions. Today’s has an Interview with A&D Mortgage’s Rich Hoffmann on tips and tricks for a successful merger between two mortgage companies, and how product expansion efforts will separate successful origination companies in the future.) Products, Software, and Services for Brokers and Lenders
