Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
Market Pulse is a monthly podcast by Equifax, in partnership with Moody’s Analytics. Equifax hosts bring you interviews with industry experts on the latest economic and credit insights that can help drive better business decisions. Whether you’re in financial, mortgage, auto or another service industry, we help make sense of the latest economic conditions that impact you. This podcast series supplements our Market Pulse webinars, which occur on the first Thursday of each month.
Welcome to the first of our
2025 Marketplace Podcast.
I'm your host Maria Urtubey,
member of the Equifax
Advisory team. As a group,
we identify economic considerations
and leverage data and analytics to
translate into industry insights.
This helps us make recommendations to
support our customers during economic
uncertainty and to uncover growth
opportunities in the consumer
credit risk space. I am pleased to
welcome our panel of experts, Emmaline
Aliff, Dave Sojka, Tom O'Neill,
and Jesse Hardin. Welcome back.
Hey, Maria. Thanks, Maria. Glad.
Hey there, Maria. Welcome to 2025.
Following the December, looking back
at our 2024 predictions podcast.
In this episode, we get a
chance to redeem ourselves,
or at least start on a clean slate
two weeks into the new year or so.
Before we dive into the conversation,
though economists Justin Begley
from Moody's Analytics is here to
share the current macroeconomic overview.
The US labor market continues to
run full steam ahead. In December,
firms added 256,000 new payrolls, the
strongest monthly gain since March.
And Besting most forecasts, once again,
the mix of industries adding
jobs was unsurprising.
Healthcare and leisure and hospitality
remained the primary drivers of new jobs.
While manufacturing slide continued,
December's upside to prize,
closed the books on yet another
strong year for the labor market.
Payrolls ended 2024 with 2.23
million more jobs than in 2023.
And while this marks a slowdown from
2020 threes, 3 million job gain,
it aligns with the average annual
pace in the three years proceeding,
the pandemic recession,
suggesting that the labor
market remains on solid footing,
the labor market will be
starting 2025 in greater balance.
The excess demand for labor that
characterize the post pandemic economy has
largely abated declining job openings,
coupled with robust labor force gains
from the recent surge in immigration,
worked to loosen the
labor market through 2024.
As firms that were previously starving
for workers were able to fill many open
positions. As a result,
there were just more than one job
opening for every unemployed person in
November, down from more than two
vacancies for every unemployed person.
At its peak in March, 2022,
the economy is generally in a
good place and small businesses,
which account for about half of
all jobs, are finally feeling it.
Small business confidence has come back
with a fury since the November election
in December.
The NFIB Small Business Optimism Index
jumped to its highest in six years.
Main street's outlook for the economy
over the next six months surged to more
than to a more than two decade high
leading December's headline gain
boosting their confidence
that the economy will improve.
Near term is the expectation
that deregulation and
lower taxes will help boost
economic growth in the next
presidential administration. However,
uncertainty on Main Street remains above
average as small firms around the edge
of their seats awaiting more clarity
about the scope and scale of Trump's
promised tariffs and deportations,
which could result in higher
input and labor costs.
Thank you, Justin.
The US economy has been navigating
a complex mix of challenges and
course correction over the last year.
And its not surprising to
hear 25 is envisioned as a
year of adjustment and
of measured adaptation.
Particularly with the upcoming
change in administration.
Inflation is expected to stabilize
bringing further relief to consumers,
but prices for some goods may
continue and upward trend,
particularly those affected by
tariffs, the housing market is cooling,
but the affordability crisis
continues with mortgage interest rates
roaming 7% on already high housing crisis.
There are a few sticky economic themes
from 2024 we identified affecting
the Yes consumer this year
and our predictions for 2025.
So let's dive in, Emmaline,
one of these being tariffs and
prices addressed by Dr. Rob
Wescott during Market Pulse.
Would you share your thoughts with
the larger audience on this topic?
Yeah, definitely. Thank you for thank
you for the opportunity. I love I love,
you know, chatting with everyone.
So as you know, as you know,
we talked with many economists around
this topic as well as our own perspective
on understanding what are some of the
biggest impacts potentially to inflation
in the coming year. One of those
will be tariffs. And, you know,
if we think about, you know, tariffs,
you know president-elect Trump described
tariff as one of the most beautiful
words in the dictionary, but what
does that really mean? And, you know,
the standpoints of you know, a tariff
is, you know, the taxation of you know,
goods coming in from an import
based status that you know,
that companies can leverage to, you
know, to build whatever their you know,
creating.
And so there's different impacts that
it can have downstream depending on you
know, how those are applied and how
the, how that's you know, occurs,
especially depending on where the source
of that those things are coming in
from. And so there, you know,
depending on where things land from a
tariff standpoint it's either could be you
know, a negative GDP impact
or inflation of some kind.
And so if we think about the various
ways that, that, that could occur in,
in discussions with with
Keybridge, you know,
they describe three different levels of,
of that potentially occurring as
posturing, light implementation,
or heavy implementation. And if we
consider a posturing perspective,
it's like threatening
the tariffs you know,
with implemented implementation being
slightly low with a little bit more
targeted perspective towards China.
And then a light implementation would be
a 10% across the board and 60% against
China. And a heavy implementation would
be 20% across the board and, you know,
upwards 600 to 200% against against
China. Mm-Hmm .
Now there's different impacts that can
have, you know you know, for example, if,
if it's just posturing,
it does create a perspective
that there needs to be you know,
less adherence to certain
supply chains from, you know,
depending on where those
tariffs could potentially go.
And potentially even building out
some things you know, more so in the,
in the United States
there, there, but you know,
that that's a longer term perspective.
So there likely would be, if,
if it moves towards a more heavy
implementation negative GDP impacts
that could be, you know,
fairly significant and resulting in
some form of a recessionary period.
And then also in addition
to that in, you know,
the inflation that could occur if if
there's not any change to to address the
increases in prices that
the consumer would bear.
Yeah, Emmaline and I, I,
I think it's interesting that e even
e even in your description of say
the, the light implementation I,
I think it's interesting to look
at how that impact would be felt.
It's not that we'd see, you
know, homogenous, you know,
increases in prices across the board.
A lot of people might not feel
any change depending upon what's,
what's being tariffed and,
and what is, you know, what,
what those consumers
are are looking to buy,
where others may feel a deep
gouge, you know, so, so it's,
it'll be interesting to see how
the implementation of it comes out.
And that's just in terms of sheer
volume and and size of the tariffs,
but where those tariffs are. Yeah.
And not just by country, but you know,
by industry, by sector, by consumer
goods or industrial goods and whatnot.
I, yeah, I hear, I hear
both of what you're saying.
I think the most interesting thing though,
to me is there there was talk
last week of now having an an
external revenue service.
So Internal Revenue Service collects
for internal you know, internal taxes,
external revenue services is gonna collect
these tariffs. And just maybe wonder,
so does, does do we implement
the external revenue service?
Then Doge turns right around
and cuts it. That, that's,
that's what's interesting to me.
, well I'll pull
on your Doge thread. Will,
will the text form be simpler for the
external revenue services as opposed to
the internal one?
Yeah, that's the question.
All.
Great. And,
and we're not even touching
on the retaliation or the
effects on foreign policy,
right. Since we're keeping it
domestic. Absolutely. But yeah. Yeah.
Very good point, Maria.
Yep. Yeah, sorry. And
relating to foreign policy,
I know Dave you've been sharing
with US immigration reform
expectations, key focus for
incoming President Trump. What,
what are you expecting
on this front in 2025?
Yeah, thanks, Maria. So, you know,
there's that initial reaction to
President's Trump statement around mass
deportation, and I'll go back to what
Emily just talked about, posturing.
So is it posturing? So are,
are we really gonna see mass deportation
or is there a more nuanced approach
where border security is addressed,
but there's still that welcoming
of high highly skilled workers that
allow the US economy to thrive?
I recently read a paper,
I think it was a couple days ago from
the Economic Innovation group and it
really went into kind of the nuance
around the highly skilled worker and the
benefits to the US economy in
terms of even seeing faster
and higher wage growth for native born
CI citizens and actually improving the
deficit. You know,
we're not gonna belabor whether
that's an accurate statement or not.
I know I've seen Liz Lindsay sorry.
There was an article in the
journal from one of our, our,
our sitting senators around
immigration and you know,
addressing some of the negatives,
but the positive was around the H
one B visa program and how important
that is. And so, and,
and actually kind of
extolling an expansion a
streamlining,
if you will to increase
the amount of visas that we
currently accept.
Dave, the, the thing that strikes me
about this whole topic in, in general, I,
I, I like the, that you, you mentioned
sort of the, the positive, you know the,
the H one level, you know, visa.
But I think on the other end of
the spectrum, you have, you know,
the consequences of, of, of the
impacts on, on labor essentially. And,
and you know, Maria, you mentioned the,
the stickiness of the affordability,
you know, theme that we've been struggling
with for a couple years now, and,
you know, continue to struggle
well in, you know, into 2025
deportations on any scale are going
to, you know, just exasperate that,
you know, if you think about, you
know, the, the costs of a lot of what,
you know, people are complaining
about the price of eggs now,
that's not gonna help. Yep.
Yeah. Your culture services.
Mm-Hmm . Yeah.
That's, that's one of my biggest concerns
is around the, the, the farming side.
You know, if we're, you know, 'cause the,
the price of eggs has been such a
heavy topic with the heavy percent of,
was it you know, 40 something,
50 something percent of
farm workers are you know,
believe to have some form of un
undocumented nature. So it's,
it just becomes a little tricky.
And absolutely immigration reform is
something that's that does need to occur.
Yeah.
It's also when you look
too at the Emily, the, the,
the format that you kind of put
on on tariffs. I mean, we, we,
we do think about the, the notion that
there is a lot of posturing here as well.
The, you know, the question is is there,
is there strength in posturing above and
beyond then the capability of actually
implementing what we've, what
we've heard the administration say?
So it will be interesting to see
how, how closely you know, the,
the threat follows to the action.
Yeah.
So to kind of take these points and
kind of to bring it home is really I'll
address kind of where I think the, you
know, the impact might be felt on the,
on the US average US citizen side
or the consumer as we try to avoid
to classify all all Americans.
So is there confidence you know,
people will be, are wondering,
you know, can I stay in
this country? Businesses,
, as you just
talked about you know,
agriculture even on the housing side,
a lot of the work that's done in
those industries is really on the
you know, the potentially Imma, you
know, illegal immigrant population.
So we have a housing shortage. We
have, we need more houses built,
and yet we potentially
have a, a, a a damage or,
or a a shock to the workers that that
would facilitate building more houses.
And so you know, there's a lot to,
to really think about
with that with that impact
on, you know, on consumers as
well as businesses. So, you know,
where we go remains to be seen.
Thank you, Dave. And maybe bringing it
back to the domestic scenario, Jesse,
you highlighted rate cuts in
your predictions last year.
What are you expecting for this year?
Yeah, thanks, Maria. I probably should
say that I'm expecting, you know,
something just to, to leave it
really vague, but way to go.
Out on a limb there, Justin. That's right.
Right. Yeah.
It will either change or not. Yeah.
Yeah. They, they will, they
will, they will change.
There is a glass.
No, I think, you know.
.
2025, you know, I personally, I
feel like it's gonna be a good year.
Certainly, I think we're still seeing
growth in the economy. You know,
we're seeing job creation, good
wage gains, low unemployment,
falling prices. So that's,
that's all the good stuff.
I think what that's what's gonna
happen is when you think of Fed policy,
the fed monetary policy is really
gonna follow what those numbers say.
But then we also have kind
of an unexpected component,
and those are really obviously
hard to hard to forecast.
Those are gonna be things like a hot
read on an economic print that comes
through.
Think of what we saw last week with the
job growth numbers coming in higher.
I think we also would expect to see
some economic challenge from the,
the things we just talked
about. Also things like fire,
think about the fires in, in
the west and the, you know, the,
the fallout from that cyber attacks
on our banking systems, et cetera. So,
you know, we can't, we can't
really forecast or predict what,
what those unexpected events will
do to policy decisions from the Fed.
Having said that, though, I think
that, you know, we saw in 2024,
there were significant policy
cut rate cuts via policy
and, and maybe more
than what some thoughts.
So I think as I think to this year,
I think we're gonna see that at least
what my baseline case would be is that
we're not gonna see any rate
cuts. Or if we do we'll,
we'll see definitely rate cuts
in, in the longer term, you know,
probably not any rate
cuts in the near term.
And I think that's just based on the,
the Fed needing to see kind of more
data to really get a better sense of,
of true direction.
Hey, Jesse,
with the recent jobs and
the was it the producer
price index that came out that was,
yeah, PPI slightly high, but not,
but lower than expected, you
know, does that change, you know,
your thoughts on that in terms of, has
the Fed actually reached its target yet?
Yeah, I mean, I think, you know,
I think with and we saw the CPI
number come out as well yesterday,
I think with the you know,
you can always kind of dissect the
report to figure out, you know,
based on your predictions, what data's
gonna support you. I think overall,
we're still seeing that prices
are moving in the right direction.
But I think the Fed's gonna be more
cautious this year. And, and I,
and I think as a result of that, I
just, I don't think we're gonna see,
you know,
broad scale cuts because the hardest
thing to do would then to be turn around
and see inflation start to increase again,
maybe through these policies
that we're talking about.
And then the Fed has to react with
rate hikes. You know, I, I mean,
with the Biden administration, I
can't imagine what the hikes would be,
let alone with now the Trump
administration, you know,
thinking about just the,
the interplay between between the
Fed and, and the executive branch.
So I think that could, you know,
that could also weigh in as well.
I think they're gonna wanna stay more
cautious especially if they wanna keep
their job.
Yeah. The the couple things that Dave
and I just talked about, you know,
with respect to price increases,
price increases and inflation
is what drives you know,
changes in rates to go higher. And,
and so it really depends on what's
gonna happen downstream with the other
peripheral aspects that would
have an impact on prices. And,
and it could impact things from a
positive standpoint or negative standpoint
with respect to those prices.
And I think where you, I,
I really liked how you frame that, Jesse,
around the a little more cautious
because anytime there is uncertainty,
there's less action and, and less
action. It's there, there. And,
and by some regards, like if we think
about these things as being posturing,
light,
imitation or heavy there might even be
some form of forced uncertainty to be
able to like, to test
the waters to see what,
what would be the best pathway forward.
Yeah. And I might close
out just by saying,
I think in terms of what I'm
looking for, then you know,
I'm gonna look for things
like wage increases. Where,
where are wages this
year coming up? You know,
is there more pressure because workers
are making more money and they have more
options and job switching? I'm
also gonna look at, you know,
what's happening with the
credit perspective in the
economy with delinquency,
you know, so are consumers
strong? Are they you know,
are we seeing a higher
delinquency that could, you know,
potentially ripple
through the economy? So,
so kind of also looking at those more
consumer impacts and you know, and,
and understanding where the fed,
because the fed's gonna be
looking at all that as well.
So kind of understanding where
their, their thinking would be.
Thank you, Jesse.
Lemme ask, let me ask you
another aspect of that,
and maybe this even
applies to what Dave and,
and Emily and also spoke about, but what,
what are your expectations around the
impacts on consumer confidence, you know,
for any, any change in,
in rates or lack thereof? Would
that be a, a downward pressure?
Do you feel that there's,
there's a maybe a sense on the
consumer sentiment side that,
that we're in a good place and,
and, you know, holding still as,
as you were mentioning, or or being
more cautious wouldn't necessarily be,
you know, a disappointment.
And I guess the same would hold true for
either of the other topics that were,
you know, that Emily talking
about tariffs and, and Dave on,
on immigration. If, if
these things hit, you know,
is that an area where we could
see a, a pretty sizable change?
Well, I mean, I would say you, you
started out saying consumer confidence,
and I would say, you know, I certainly
use that as a directional indicator.
I don't think though,
that we would see the Fed using
something like consumer confidence as a
barometer for making a move.
And it's simply because there's,
there is noise in that data,
right? You know, you can,
you can actually look at that data and
if you graft it over the last, you know,
20 to 30 years, you can actually see
when elections happen because, you know,
there's a you know, there's a
bias towards who's, you know,
whose party's in power. I
do think, though, I mean,
overall consumer confidence does
indicate kind of the direction that the
economy is going. And so, you know,
as consumers feel more burdened with
things like service level inflation
those, those numbers
just not coming down, I,
I think that's where you're gonna
see, you know, the Fed taking those,
those types of movements
into consideration. You know,
are we seeing wage growth that's you know,
that's maybe beyond what was expected,
in which case you're, you know,
you're seeing more pressure on on those
inflation numbers. And same with what,
what Emily said with tariffs and
Dave, you know, said with immigration.
I mean,
those are gonna be obviously factors
that play into overall confidence and,
and, you know, and, and then
you know, driving the, the,
the policy that the Fed
is is gonna put forward.
Thank you, Jesse. And I know
we have so, so much time to,
to address, we still have a, a hot topic,
which is housing Tom with us
mortgage debt at almost 13 trillion,
almost 74% of the total consumer
debt as of November of last year.
What are you expecting specific
to, to housing in 2025?
Yeah, it's, it, it,
it's probably appropriate that we have
this one following all of the other
topics because all of the other
topics impact, yeah. What the,
the housing market's gonna
be. And and, and as the,
the father of, of a, you know,
child who is looking to make his
first housing purchase in the,
the coming months, unfortunately, I can't
say that it's a great environment for,
for him to do so. We're,
we're still slogging along in,
in the housing department, and,
and it's probably going to continue
the, the same set of culprits, you know,
high housing prices driven predominantly
by, you know, short inventories
you know, high, you know mortgage
rates, you know, you know,
making it even more difficult. It's,
it's something that's impacting any
consumer that's, that's
in the home buying market,
but particularly the, the younger
generations. Yeah. For obvious reasons.
A lot of the older generations, such as
myself, we've, we've been in our homes,
you know, we've built up equity in there.
We, you know, even if we are in the,
the market for a new house,
we could use that equity and our savings
and the stuff that we've built up over
time to help offset some of the,
those higher costs and the,
the overall affordability of
going into the housing market.
The younger generations
don't have that. They, and,
and they're still
wanting to, to, you know,
to make that first housing
purchase. And we've seen in the,
the data that the average
mortgage balance for,
for those younger generations is rising
at a much higher rate than any other
generations. You know,
simply because, you know,
they're entering the market at a, at
a pretty nasty time to be doing. So.
I was hearing yesterday,
even on the positive side this is
driving alternatives and innovation
on the rent to own and the shared housing
market. Mm-Hmm . So some,
you know, variation of
those struggles, right?
What are other alternatives might
surface, right, right. As a result.
Yeah, you certainly see, see
the innovation, you know,
as people look for alternatives. And, and,
and I'd love to say that it's a
temporary you know, fix until the,
the, the conditions improve.
But as we've been talking about
here, there's, there,
there are completely negative, you
know, there are some things that might,
you know, drive the, the
housing conditions in a,
in a better way, you know,
as including stuff that the
incoming administration has has,
you know, mentioned is a, is a
priority, tax cuts, you know,
easing of regulatory, you know,
conditions. Those may, you know, be a,
a positive boost for builders to, you
know, to go out there and, and, you know,
take the risk of, of building
more. But on the flip side,
it could just as easily have the negative
impacts of some of the policies being
discussed, you know, some of which
we've been talking about here. You know,
if we've got, you know, a ding to the,
the, the labor, you know, availability,
that's not gonna help, you
know, ease the inventory.
If we increase, you
know, tariffs, you know,
you might not associate that
directly, but if, you know,
increased tariffs have an impact on
the materials that go into building,
you know and, and maintenance of, of
housing, that's gonna be felt as well.
So it's, it's definitely
I I do think that,
that there will be some breaking
up of the, the log jam, but it's,
it's still gonna be slow.
Yeah. I, I think, Tom, one of the things
I was actually thinking about as a,
as a now home purchaser
in in this en environment,
I'm actually going through that process
as well, selling and buying you know,
obviously rates are, I, I'm,
I'm kind of blown away working
with mortgage lenders right now,
just seeing where the rates are, you know,
'cause my frame of reference was
refinancing in the, the boom Yeah.
The refinanced boom after.
We were spoiled, weren't we?
Yeah, yeah. You know, I mean,
I I, I dare to say like,
I have a one in front of
my my rate right now, but
I think one of the things that I, you
know, I kind of think about is the,
right now the, you know,
the, the Fed as we just,
or as I talked about the
Fed had cut rates last year,
but we really didn't see any of that
translate into movement on rates.
And that's has a lot to do with the,
the 10 year treasuries and the premiums,
right. You know, associated with
those. I do hope, you know, as,
as the new administration comes in
and maybe things settle a little bit,
we'll see that that premium, that yield
premium, you know, starts to, to fall.
And maybe we do see you know,
we see a reduction in mortgage rates
just kind of naturally as the as the
unknown of the new administration starts
to work itself out, you know, so that,
you know, that could help as well as,
as we think of, you know, direction,
even if we don't see large scale rate
decreases from the Fed in, you know,
in 2025, that yield spread being
a little bit smaller might help.
Thank you for all sharing all those
thoughts. Before we close out,
I do want to recap such,
so similar to the lighting round that
Jesse went through with our prediction
leveling set for 24,
if you could in a summary
summarized version
share your predictions for 25.
Let's get started with you, Tom.
I'll go first. Yeah. Do you want Tom.
Tom to go first? Yeah, sure. I'll,
I'll go first. Yeah, because I,
I just sort of,
I kind of obliquely re
referred to it is that my safe
prediction is that the, the,
the mortgage market will continue to be
the housing market and mortgage market
will, will both be con continuing
to just sort of slog through 2025.
My, my little more daring
prediction will be that
Gen Z will,
will continue to have an even bigger
mark on its head from the other
generations that,
that they'll be painted as lazy and
not moving out of their parents' ba
basements when in reality it's
because they just can't afford to.
Wow. I, I have a different
take similar to yours.
Affordability for sure will be limited,
and I don't see the housing market
or, or the help as you said,
towards younger generations
going anywhere until prices.
It's not so much the interest
rate, but prices decrease.
And I'm positive or or optimistic on
the Gen ZI think they will teach us a
lesson. They're, they're way more
focused than we, than we envision.
And they, they will surprise
us. I think that that.
Will, I, I share that opinion. Maria,
I am optimistic about the generation,
regardless of, you know, their attitude
towards avocado toast, ,
look at two.
Glass half full peoples. I love it.
Emmaline.
I personally like avocado toast
too, so I take offense to that.
.
But the, I I do think very.
California.
Yeah. I,
I do think that affordability will
likely be one of the higher challenges.
'cause We, you know, of all the things
we talked about, price increases,
were likely going to be, you know,
some of the impact that we
could potentially see even
with those uncertainties.
Like whatever un uncertainty could
happen, I, but with the affordability,
I do think it's gonna have some
level of nuance associated with it,
specifically that nuance will
likely have a further you know,
spreading out of the KS shaped
economy we've been talking about,
because we know that delinquencies have
been on the rise and, you know, auto,
for example, are,
is higher at a delinquency level than
it was during the during the great
Recession, right? You know,
however, auto delinquencies,
when we look at payment hierarchy
it is still at a highest,
one of the highest likelihood of
getting paid. So if someone is,
is moving at a place where
they're delinquent on their
auto and it's higher than
the great recession, that means they
haven't paid their other debts first.
So there's like, there's, there's
gonna be continued separation.
So those people who have been able
to invest in the stock market,
who have you know, who have like a,
a home, who have all those things,
who have the financial literacy
will continue to, to thrive,
where those consumers who have
been struggling may struggle more.
Thank you. Dave or Jesse?
I, I, okay, go ahead, Dave.
I'll, I'm close this up.
Because unlike, yeah,
because unlike you there's a glass
I'm gonna make a bold prediction.
So we're recapping on
the immigration job side,
my bold prediction. There will
be a bipartisan bill passed
this year that secures the border,
while at the same time a lot
expanding the H one B visa program.
That is bold.
Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's bold.
It's bold to say bold and
bipartisan in the same statement. I.
Bought it. .
. All right, I'll
close this out. So yeah,
I know you know, I, I kind of, I kind of
hit on it when I, when I spoke before,
but I think what we're, what,
what my baseline would be from a rate
standpoint is that we're gonna see
maybe one cut as a, as a baseline.
And then my bold prediction
would be that there,
there could be rumblings of rate
hike at at least a rate hike,
and it's going to, it's gonna cause
chaos. Having said that, though,
I do wanna review that.
There were two things that I think
came to mind as I was just listening to
everybody talk about their, their
different subjects. You know,
I spoke of unexpected
impacts to monetary, fiscal,
monetary policy. One that I,
that I do wanna shine light on when we
think of federal student loans. So we,
we do know that delinquencies are gonna
be reported now on those student loans.
They're, you know, they're coming
through the you know, sometime in the,
the late early February to, to
mid-February timeframe. And you know,
as I said before,
that's what I think we can't
predict necessarily in terms of
building that through to,
to what happens with rates.
But something like you know, a higher
level of student loans and the,
and the turmoil that that causes, like
that, that's I think where you know,
the Fed may have to pivot from that,
you know, from that one cut that I,
that I mentioned. The other
thing I would mention, I,
we've all kind of talked about
affordability, but you know,
one that comes to mind is
insurance right now, you know,
certainly housing insurance
on housing, it's it's, it's,
it was already challenged let alone
now what happens with some of the, the,
you know, tragedy we've seen on
the West coast. So, you know, just,
just kind of throw that out as when we
think of unexpected events, they're,
they're gonna come up. We know
they are. And and, and, you know,
we just have to kind of size
'em, see what the impact is, and,
and then figure out how that impacts
both the consumer and you know,
and the economy.
Thank you, Jesse.
You wrapped us up very nicely with
other key topics to keep in mind.
Thank you again, Jesse Davely and
of course, Tom for joining me today.
To our listeners, I hope
you enjoyed today's topic.
How do these predictions align with your
expectations for the year and what are
your predictions for 2025? If, if you
would like to share these with us,
with us, or have questions or
suggestions for future podcasts,
please reach out to us at risk
advisors@equifax.com. We
would love to hear from you.