Jon Stewart compares this week’s interest rate cut by the Federal Reserve to a certain singer’s epic concerts: “So a rate cut is like the Eras Tour. Everybody is excited. There’s only, like, one person who wouldn’t be excited,” he said on the latest episode of his weekly podcast, “The Weekly Show.”
Guest Jason Furman, an Aetna professor of economic policy at Harvard, led Stewart into the remark, then echoed that reference to Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump. “I think that person also doesn’t like Taylor Swift, but you know, I don’t know if these are related,” he quipped.
“It’s the same person!” Stewart confirmed with a laugh.
Trump’s well-documented hatred of Swift peaked after she publicly endorsed his presidential rival Kamala Harris after the two candidates faced off in their first debate last week. The reason why he may not be so excited in this case is because the rate cut could end up helping Harris.
The former president had previously been seemingly fooled by an AI ad where Swift appeared to be endorsing him. He responded to Swift’s post-debate endorsement of Harris with an all-caps tweet that read, “I HATE TAYLOR SWIFT!”
Stewart, Furman and fellow guest Kitty Richards, a senior fellow at the nonprofit think tank Groundwork Collaborative and a former Treasury official, talked about why eggs, cars and houses all cost more after the pandemic — i.e., the mechanics of inflation.
“It’s a thousand different stories, or it’s a million different stories, and we have one blunt tool to deal with it: which is raising interest rates or lowering interest rates,” Stewart said. He went on to ask why we don’t fight inflation in “a more complex way.”
The comic took particular issue with the way some hold up giving money directly to individuals as being a problem, but giving it to corporations being fine — particularly when it comes to the economic stimulus used in the recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic.
“You can suggest that a little bit more money being injected into consumers just drives inflation, but we inject money into corporations all the time,” Stewart said.
“You’re talking about trillions and trillions of dollars, right? That went to the supply side and to corporations. Trillions,” Stewart underlined. “But the 1 trillion that went directly to consumers is the problem? So if you want to talk about deficit, Trump had an $8 trillion deficit over four years. I’m just talking about, suddenly, when the deficit is about money being given to workers or consumers, it’s a problem.”
And yes, the hour-long conversation is every bit as exciting as all that economic talk sounds — so if that sounds like your specific jam, go jam on by watching the entire Jon Stewart “Weekly Show” conversation in the video below:
The Federal Reserve announced the half-point rate cut on Wednesday.
At the press conference, Chair Jerome Powell called it a “recalibration” of central bank policy, adding that the Fed will continue to make decisions on a case-by-case basis, CNBC reported.
Responding to criticism, Powell added, “I don’t see anything in the economy right now that suggests that the likelihood of a recession — sorry, of a downturn — is elevated. I don’t see that. You see growth at a solid rate. You see inflation coming down. You see a labor market that’s still at very solid levels.”
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