Thank you so much Kelly. Alright, join me now. Monetarymacros.com, CIO Joseph Wong, Bianco Research President, and Jane Bianco. We got so much brainpower here, guys. We have to open the doors. Let's, you know, keep it down here. Alright, let me start with you, Joe. First time in studio. And I was reading your work. Let's go backwards. So this balancing act for Jane Powell, you think he'll say, okay, it's okay to cut rates based on some softness in jobs, even though it means longer-sticky inflation. Well, first of all, it's a pleasure to be here. This is a magnificent studio.
And I do think that's how it works. So the Fed ultimately is political in the sense that the people who work there, they have certain values and beliefs, right? And when you look at it, when you look at what those values and beliefs are, they are heavily, heavily part of the Democratic Party, right? You can see that in public voting data as well. And one of the hallmarks of being of that view of the value is valuing employment more than inflation. So I think when push comes to shove, we have a little bit higher in unemployment. When we have, even if inflation is still a bit high, I think they're gonna cut. And I think that's going to keep us stuck with higher inflation simply because politically, that's their value system. They're just really, really afraid of unemployment.
Jim? You know, I would agree with that, that the Fed value system does lean that way. I would put a nuance on it that the Fed is not necessarily partisan. And what I mean by partisan is they don't sit around the FOMC table and say, who do we wanna vote? Who do we want to win the November election? I don't think they do that at all. But I do think that their political values come in. Where I'll take a little bit of disagreement is, if the Fed wants to tolerate a little bit higher inflation, they're gonna risk a bad reaction on the bond market. Because I think the bond market is comforted when the Fed is on the case, when they're worried about inflation. If the Fed is gonna say, we'll tolerate a little bit inflation, then we'll tolerate owning a little bit less of your bonds and push the price down and push the yield higher.
So we talked about this a lot for a while. You were in no man's land with no landing, then the bandwagon started to fill up right now. You've kind of adjusted your stance here a little bit, right? Yeah, I was always looking for the idea that we would make a new high in yields at five to five and a half. We got the four and three quarters. So I kind of moved to neutral, only because it's 75% of the way done. What's the old line on Wall Street, pigs get fat and hogs get slaughtered? And I'll take 75% and back off.
I still think we might give five, five and a half, but it's not that far away anymore. And if we get that without any kind of a major move in the market, I suspect they might start thinking about getting along this market, at least looking for a meaningful bond market rally. You know, Joe, one thing I've been worried about, and I've used it on a show a few times, you know, the Hemingway gradually then sudden. And I kind of thought about it a little bit with the initial job that's claimed support came in significantly higher than expected. Since then, they're saying maybe there's a quirk with the New York data, you know, Wall Street, those circle the wagons quickly when the narrative starts to change. But do you worry about sort of a shock? I'm not sure where it would come from, but it feels like there's a lot of, the economists are too saying one about this. Whether on either side, they believe it's gonna gradually keep going up or gradually go down. And none of them seem to expect any sort of shock to the system.
So I think you're right to note that the labor market has been deteriorating. We saw that this morning in the jobless claims, we saw that in our info payrolls. I think what the economists don't see, and what they can't see, is that this time around, we have a significant increase in the supply of labor. We have millions of people coming into this country, and a lot of them are illegal, so we just don't know how many. Now, I think what could happen is as we have weakened and demand, and we have this ongoing supply that people just don't know, can't see, but it's there in the millions, we could have a rise in unemployment, a weakening in the job market that is faster than expected. But certain industries, that wouldn't help though. I mean, like these industries that are saying, these aren't necessarily all skilled laborers.
Exactly. People can't go straight to Silicon Valley and get a job. Right, right, a lot of the people coming, they're not sending their best. So I think in certain sectors, we can have unemployment rates shoot up a lot faster than expected. So rather than a sudden shortfall in demand, I think weakening demand and sudden surges apply. So, Jim, what are you saying now that's most prevalent on your radar? Probably the economy and inflation. The inflation rate has really stalled at around, let me use CPI, above 3%, it's gonna probably be about 3.4, if the estimates are correct for the April CPI report. And this whole narrative that Wall Street has had that we were in this last mile to going to 2%, and Fed officials saying that the inflation rate will fall later this year, there's a phrase that he used called the base effect. Look at the numbers from a year ago, they're very, very low, the inflation numbers. If we get modest or normal inflation numbers now, the year of your number might start trending higher, and that's gonna be difficult for the Fed to be making the case that they're still on the path towards 2% because the numbers won't be headed that way until at the earliest, the fall, only if you get the data to kind of cooperate.
So what do you make, then, Jim, of the, the sort of, I feel like it's become a wild card, housing or shelter? Because when Powell initially began with this rate hiking cycle, it wasn't long after the data was coming in, and it was sort of surprising, it was still a little bit too hot, but the part that was hot was for the most part, things like insurance but housing and shelter. And all the economists have said, well, the way they factor in, the way they figured out, there's always gonna be a three or four month lag, spend like a year lag, and maybe housing is going in the other direction. If that doesn't fix itself, then what does a Fed do?
Well, that'll be a big problem because no matter what you think about housing, it is everybody's biggest cost. Whether it's rental or the owner from home. I think what we're missing with the housing numbers is what we talk about with general inflation. The cumulative impact of housing inflation since 2020 has been much greater than people think. So while they talk about housing rolling over the OER, the owner's equivalent rent part of CPI, rolling over and bringing down CPI, it still hasn't caught up to things like Zillow or apartment.com showing 30 or 40% increases in rent. It's only up about 25%. That's why I think it's been difficult for it to come down. It's still trying to correct that divergence. I saw a report yesterday said that 2023, New York rents went up seven times at New York salaries. And somewhere like one out of four people in Manhattan is a millionaire, you have to be. And that's just to get a shoebox apartment.
Joe, what's most prevalent for you, Mike? What are you most concerned about right now? So what I'm most concerned about really is the fiscal situation. I think what's really changing going forward is that if you continue to have a 6% fiscal deficit, what you're really doing is you're printing dollars, you're debasing the currency. And that I think throws everyone off course. Are you surprised these bond yields like this, the bond auction rather? I mean, it was a little sloppy, but it's still concerning how much money they're raising. I mean, at some point, do you think that could be a place where we, you know, because you talked about the bond, the philanthropies, I guess, these bond auctions seem to be going off okay so far. Yeah, yeah, I'm really surprised about the bond market. You know, if I were a bond investor and I saw 6% fiscal deficits forever, that so much even merited a special mention in the IAFs reports that then I wouldn't really be buying bonds in these years. So I'm with Jim. I think bond yields should go higher. And I think this is something that perhaps the market, because we've been in a multi-decade bull market for such a long time, you have a lot of complacency here. You have a lot of people who are basically grown up in the world where you just buy bonds and you make money. For 40 years. I think that's changing and that takes time to do filter into markets. Ironically, it's changing right before our eyes, but it feels like a slow motion train wreck. And by the time we all catch on, maybe people wish they saw this segment. And Jim, thank you both very much. Really appreciate it. Thank you. All right, folks, we're going to stick with housing. We've got.