Julia Coronado:
That's absolutely right.
And, actually, Chair Powell touched on that. He said, one of the reasons we see this discrepancy between low consumer sentiment numbers and really good readings from a macroeconomist standpoint is that prices are much higher than they used to be, and people don't like that.
What a soft landing would entail or allow is for the job market to keep going OK, people continue to get wage raises, and that will allow their purchasing power to catch up. Things like falling gas prices also help consumer purchasing power. So it will take a little bit of time to catch up, but the economy is actually adding up in the right direction, that people will start to see real wage gains.
They're already seeing real wage gains, where raises are running at a faster pace than inflation. And over time, it's not that prices are going to come back down to pre-pandemic, but your income is going to catch up.
ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7sa7SZ6arn1%2Bjsri%2Fx6isq2ejnby4e8inq56qlajBbr7ArZysZaKauqK1zWasp5uYlruoscNmma6sXZuypbHRmqNmqpWosrPCxGaqop%2Belrm0ecKuq6xlk6S6qrrGZqCnZWJlf3U%3D