Federal Open Market Committee Meeting

Welcome back to Mornings on Two, today's Dollars and Cents. The Federal Reserve wraps up its latest policy meeting before noon today. What has changed and what is being considered when the Fed decides its next move for the U.S. economy? Financial advisor Chris Murkowski joins us now to talk about that. Chris, good morning. It doesn't feel like anything has really changed. Inflation's still high. We're still dealing with higher prices for just about everything. What do you think the Fed will do and say? Well, it's interesting. I was just looking at the um actually one of the things that nobody really pays attention to uh outside us dorks is the money supply uh which has grown at a rate that we haven't seen since 2022 so the fed is back in business as far as printing money is concerned and uh in case you're not aware everybody uh we're 40.5 trillion dollars in debt and there's no end in sight uh when it comes to this because neither party really seems to really care about or think about it you know all these things that we're talking about on the campaign trail here gee you know the fact that we've gone you know since the turn of the century to five trillion dollars in debt to 40.5 is an issue and the federal reserve um kevin warsh is you know god bless him um he's supposed to be dealing with this i think because of the political nature we have uh obviously an election next week i don't think he'll do much right now i think they'll probably put off raising rates until later on in the year with that being said there's certain things that the fed can't deal with um fed can't do a darn thing about the war in iran can't do a darn thing about that can't do a darn thing about what's going on in ukraine can't bring oil prices down I should crack jokes about this with Jay Powell I mean eggs were going up during the Biden administration and everybody's yelling about it What is he supposed to do, put masks on chickens because of the avian flu? The Fed has to deal with the money supply, and they're an enabler of the United States Congress. Ultimately, the ultimate enabler, ultimately the real fault lies with inflation and why we're paying more and more and more and why the value continues to drop. Let's be honest, people. It's us because we continue to vote these people into office. We continue to demand more and more stuff from them, and we just don't have the money for it. So that's why we get the money printing. And that's why inflation is kind of we're kind of just getting used to it, it seems. What a timely message since we have a chance to vote next week. Great, Chris. Look at that. Ironic. All right. Wall Street expecting no change in rates. As you said, what do you think investors and economists want to hear from Waller and the Fed? Again, investors are going to be much happier if the Fed doesn't raise rates. But in and of itself, the market's kind of taking care of it all by itself. I mean, today I looked the 10 years back above five, even though it dropped below last week. We are still, even though we're $40.5 trillion, we're not France. We're not. We have an economy that's growing. We have an economy that's dynamic. We continue to build and create things here in this country, which is fantastic, which allows us, honestly, to be in this position. The issue is, is what a lot of these new investments that we have, you talk about, you know, anthropic and AI, they are very much capital, you know, they need more and more money. There's not enough money out there to fund all of these things. Now, when the cost of money goes up, when interest rates go up, changes the dynamic to some degree in regards to the business models from these companies. So, again, there's going to be a crowding out effect, if you will, when it comes to certain interests that are borrowing money at this point in time. Yeah, very interesting. All right. We're going to see what happens. But you're you're so right in pointing out those global concerns and wars going on that the Fed really can't do anything about. Chris Murkowski, we appreciate it. Thank you for your time. Have a great day. You, too.