Inflation Is Cooling, So Why Is the Fed Running Hot? | Macro Mondays

**Mikkel Rosenvold** (0:22)
Hello there, welcome to Real Vision, welcome to Macro Mondays. My name is Mikkel Rosenvold, I'm your show as usual, And I'm the host, as usual, on this show, and I'm joined, of course, by my partner in crime, Andreas Steno. So Andreas, I want to get right to it, because this has been on my mind since earlier today, when you and I were in the office. We were heading out for lunch, and you looked at me and said, this was back when you were actually in the office. You've obviously gone home now, I'm still in the office. But you looked at me and you said, Mikkel, we're going Goldilocks.
Are we going Goldilocks, Andreas?

**Andreas Steno** (0:59)
I think so. I mean, the probability is clearly increasing, which is very, very odd at this stage of the business cycle. Let me just for clarity reiterate what Goldilocks actually means. It means that inflation is coming down while growth is recovering. It's a fairly rare mix, economically speaking, late in the cycle. But it's probably here due to a range of technicalities around inflation that we can discuss in detail on this show. But yeah, sure, I mean, we watch this on a daily basis in our now casting, and the probability of us entering a Goldilocks regime has risen over the past month and we're getting there. It's the second most likely regime by now.
And it would wrong-foot a lot of pundits if we get there, especially those who have banged the drum on inflation due to the Iran war over and over and over.

**Mikkel Rosenvold** (1:52)
Absolutely, Andreas. Speaking of Goldilocks, we have a true Goldilocks week. That's probably a bit much. But anyway, we have a great week ahead of us at the Real Vision. Lots of great content. We obviously have all our usual publications on Real Vision. You need to be on ProChair to get full access. But on the AlphaChair, you can also get access to weekly digest of our view of the world as well as some of our data points out there, including this macro regime that we're going to shift back to in just a minute. So lots of great content to find over at Real Vision. Go check out your options there. But back to the show, Andreas.
We'll dive much more into the outlook for the US consumer. What to expect there. The read on inflation and probably also cover some interesting developments in Trump's Asia policy over the past few days. Speaking of the US president, Andreas, I wanted to get your take on this because I'm not a golfer. You're much more of a golf guy than I am, to say the least. We had this from, I don't know who the US Democratic Socialists are. But anyway, I like the stat that Donald Trump has been golfing as per his public calendar. I haven't checked this, but I assume it's correct. He's been golfing for 45 percent of the days in his second term.
This is a jab clearly at Donald Trump, but is this really bad for a president to be golfing? Is it a bit much? Perhaps, what's your take?

**Andreas Steno** (3:19)
Well, I salute it to a large extent, to be honest. I'm an avid golfer at least. I played a lot of golf when I was younger. Currently, I'm trying to get my kids to find the interest in playing the game. I have succeeded a lot more with my second son than with my first son. So let's see whether I get them on the golf course as often as Trump is. But having said that, it's one of the best ways to have a long and informal discussion with people suffering from attentive disorders. I sincerely think that Trump suffers from such one, which is why I've always liked playing golf with business partners, clients and so on and so forth because it gives you a nice natural flow in a discussion because you also have something very concrete to talk about on a running basis, sitting next to each other in the golf buggy. In that sense, I get why he's doing it.
In our neck of the woods, we saw how the Finnish president managed to sneak in a business deal with the US after having played golf with Trump. I also think Lindsay Graham, maybe rest in peace, managed to sneak in a lot of his points to Trump during golf rounds.
You better start playing golf for as long as Trump is president. If you want a word to say, if you know what I mean.

**Mikkel Rosenvold** (4:42)
I think this is probably the weakest criticism point you can have of Trump.