00:00The new year means a new set of voters on the FOMC.
00:02Mike McKee's tracking there for us.
00:03Good morning, Michael.
00:04A bit of a hawkish tilt this year, right?
00:06A bit of a hawkish tilt this year.
00:08We don't need leaks from the Fed because they pretty much tell us what they're thinking.
00:12We do have four new voters from the regional banks rotating onto the voting schedule.
00:18And they're pretty much all hawks with the exception of perhaps Anna Paulson,
00:22Beth Hammock, Neil Kashkari and Laurie Logan have made it clear.
00:25They don't think that we really need to cut rates in January.
00:28We're only at a 16 percent chance of that, maybe because markets are looking at who is going to be voting this year.
00:35Paulson speaking a few days ago saying that she thinks it's a finely balanced situation.
00:41One person who is not a voter this year, will be next year, but is making his views known this morning, Tom Barkin from Richmond.
00:49And he's also in that finely balanced camp where he's not taking a position either way.
00:54He's somewhat optimistic, saying in a speech just now that 2025's uncertainty is bound to diminish.
01:02The fog should lift.
01:03And as firms build confidence in demand and the policy environment, that should be good for hiring and investment.
01:08Then he adds, but going forward, policy will require finely tuned judgments, balancing progress on each side of our mandate.
01:15So the question is, does the Barkin scenario come true or not?
01:21Neil Kashkari yesterday on CNBC saying he thinks they're pretty close to neutral right now, so he's not expecting a whole lot.
01:28It'll all come down to what the data tell us, the jobs report and CPI.
01:32And I note this morning that we're a little more optimistic on the jobs front.
01:36Yesterday we were talking about an estimate of 59,000 jobs created in December.
01:40Now we're up to 65,000.
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