Squawk on the Street 2nd Hour: 5/15/26

SPEAKER_1 (0:00)

Dell PCs with Intel Inside are built for the moments you plan and the ones you don't. They're for those all-night study sessions, the moment you're working from a cafe and realize every outlet's taken, the times you're deep in your flow and can't be interrupted by an auto update. That's why Dell builds tech that adapts to you, built with long-lasting battery so you're not scrambling for an outlet, and built-in intelligence that makes updates around your schedule, not in the middle of it. Find technology built for the way you work at dell.com/dellpcs. Built for you.

SPEAKER_3 (0:31)

Introducing Fidelity Trader Plus, the next generation of advanced trading from Fidelity. Customize your tools and charts and access them seamlessly across desktop, web, and mobile. For faster trades, anywhere you go. Try the all-new Fidelity Trader Plus. Learn more about our most powerful trading platform yet at fidelity.com/traderplus.

Investing involves risk, including risk of loss. Fidelity Brokerage Services, LLC. Member NYSE, SIPC.

Sara Eisen (1:00)

Good Friday morning. Welcome to Squawk on the Street. I'm Sara Eisen with Carl Quintanilla, live from Post 9 as always of the New York Stock Exchange. David Faber is still on assignment. Stocks moving lower to end the week as President Trump wraps up his trip to China, with some new details on Boeing, NVIDIA, Taiwan, and more. We'll head to Beijing for you for the latest. Clash chips moving lower after a wild week for the space, which saw NVIDIA reach record highs and the blockbuster debut of Cerebris. We'll talk to an analyst about the next big catalyst and Apollo's Chief Economist, Thorsten Schlock with us as Fed Share Powell wraps up his final day as chair. That is what I'm focused on today, which is the final day of Fed Share Powell's eight-year term. I put together what I think are some defining charts for his term. When it comes to any Fed Share really, it has to start with inflation.

One of the two mandates for the Fed is to keep prices in check. Here is what it looked like over Powell's tenure.

No real problems and then coming out of COVID, we saw this spike where CPI, consumer price inflation went all the way up to 9 percent, and then it was brought back down. Now, was Fed Share Powell a little late to be serious about inflationary threat and hike interest rates? Some would argue yes. Was transitory wrong? Yes, that's a mistake that he noted. However, he forcefully acted when it became clear that price inflation was sticking around and was getting serious, and they saw the tightest monetary policy that we've seen since the Volcker era, and it has come down. Now, look at that little tick up recently. That's the Iran War, and that's the challenge that the next Fed Chair, Kevin Warsh, is presented with. I also want to show you CPI versus unemployment, because everyone thought that when it came to that spike in inflation there, it would be almost impossible for the Fed to get a hold of it without causing a recession or without causing a big spike in the unemployment rate. But if you look at what happened with the unemployment rate in the orange line, it's really been stable. It only ticked up a little bit. This is the soft landing. Remember, we were always debating every day. Can you do it with a soft landing? In 2022, that was the debate, right? There's no way he can get the soft landing because he has to raise interest. Remember, at one point there, it was a triple rate hike. He raised rates 75 basis points and yet they achieved the soft landing. We did not see a spike in the unemployment rate. The other one I'll tell you about is the balance sheet, which of course is also widely debated but encapsulates, I think, really one of the greatest feats which was saving the global economy from a depression during the depths of COVID. The balance sheet went from $4 trillion up to $9 trillion. This is essentially the Fed buying everything from treasuries to mortgages.

Remember, they were just injecting liquidity into the system in a giant way. Now, some would argue it caused inflation, it caused inequality. This is definitely a topic for debate and it's something that Fed Chair Warsh wants to bring down.

But it also is the story of the stabilization, I think, of finance. Remember what was happening? Treasury markets were not functioning well. Markets were seizing up, oil went below zero. Remember, that was like a crazy period and so this was the response to that. I think these are the key elements when you talk about what he's been through, the COVID saving, the inflation fighting. That really tells the story.