Claudia Sahm: Thinking Through Scenarios in a Whiplash Economy

Our guest on the podcast today is Claudia Sahm. Claudia is chief economist at New Century Advisors, the founder of Sahm Consulting, and a regular contributor at Bloomberg Opinion. She has policy and research expertise in macroeconomics, consumer spending, and household finance. She created the Sahm rule, an automatic trigger for stimulus payments in recessions. Previously, she was a section chief at the Federal Reserve, where she oversaw the Survey of Household Economics and Decisionmaking. Before that, she worked for 10 years on the staff’s macroeconomic forecast. She was a senior economist at the Council of Economic Advisers. She holds a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Michigan and a bachelor’s degree in economics, political science, and German from Denison University.

Episode Highlights

00:00:00 Lessons From the Fed During the Global Financial Crisis

00:04:56 Making Sense of Fed-Speak

00:09:29 The “Whiplash Economy” and Understanding Risk

00:14:21 Rising Gas Prices, Geopolitical Uncertainty, and Consumer Sentiment

00:18:03 Interest Rates, AI, and Fed Leadership Changes

00:29:48 Undoing the Effects of Trump’s Tariffs

00:33:34 The Sahm Rule and Recession Risk Today

00:43:56 Costs of Underfunding US Economic Data

00:49:57 “Economics Is a Disgrace”

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