shock and the subsequent fiscal policy shock as well, has that shook us out of the malaise from the gsc, so that some time, whether it is a few years from now, we will look back and say, that shook us out of that post gsc malaise and potential growth, and our star higher? how would you be thinking about that? vice chair jefferson: well, our star, i am a teacher at heart, i'm going to assume people know what our star is. i think of it as the equilibrium interest rate in the economy. but it is hard to know what that interest rate. then i interpret your question as to whether or not it has shifted up in the post-pandemic period. the way that i think about that is that i am not going to know for sure until i see an economy in balance. perhaps before the pandemic is here to think about what the -- what the equilibrium interest rate was. because we were in a non-inflationary environment that was growing over an extended period of time. in that type of world, you have that type of stability, of fundamentally unobservable variables, can be somewhat more straightforward because the economy is no

to his point is yes, it might not be the gsc, but it's not something that we can ignore and mostly given the fact that 70% of the economy is driven by the consumer. >> what about the idea that he puts puts forth, keith that he gets rate cuts and once you feel like you've sniffed it out, what does that mean for your overall outlook for stocks? does it change at that very moment? >> no, because if we get rate cuts and maybe for a bad reason and maybe because the economy's slowing down at a more rapid pace which would hurt earnings? >> in some ways what i'm looking forward to is the employment and labor market still sees relativ relatively strong and the consumer may hold just fine and cooling from a very strong level and if you look at the earnings side of the equation and what this all moves into we are at an 18-month high. the other point going back to the question you had before. before the gloenl financial crossis and it was from 19.90 it hasn't averaged am 5%. this is a more normal wade in the haft decade when you think about the equity and ten-year relationship 37. >> sure, but the i

second proposal suggests that we should do something further, that in past economic cycles, we've seen gscspply during times like this or the fed. but just pick up the slack, not go back to quantitative easing. >> let me just jump in for a second. whether or not the fed can do more is a question that relates back to the economy and also to whether people are going to now blame them for partly causing this problem in the first place by buying so much. so that leaves franny and freddy. wouldn't we have to change their structure? they're in conservatorship, this raises the question of being able to take them out of it. having these discussions i feel like i'm in 2006 all over again. >> it is complicated. the excess is only $2 billion a day. which sound like a lot to the average listener. think about the fed brought $1.7 trillion between 2020 and 2022, $2 billion a day to take out the excess capacity would be incredibly impactful to rates in the short run. not to where they were, but back to 100 basis points lower than they are today. >> let me ask a silly question as well. how many people are