Following is a snippet from the interview with Gary Cohn, Freakonomics radio
Question:
What led to the strong recovery from the bad December?
Reply:
1) The end of a month-long partial government shutdown
2) Indication that the trade war with China was moving towards a resolution
3) and a decision by the Federal Reserve to stop raising interest rate
Question:
It's interesting because usually the chair of the FED as we know is wildly independent, but it was a case of the President pretty much came out and said to Jerome Powell the chair the FED Reserve: "I would really prefer that you stop doing what you're doing and stop talking about raising interest rates."
Should the FED work that way?
Reply:
I'm going to hope it wasn't. Hope it was I'm going to hope that Jerome Powell and the FED governors in seeing all of the data they see... I mean they got more PhD anyone else, they talked to all the companies in the world in the United States and the regional FED system is designed to bring them real-time data from the local economy, I surely hope and I almost pray that what the FED did was in reaction to what they were seeing in the data that they felt that there was an actual slowing of the economy and they were in the wrong place.
About Gary Cohn
Gary Cohn served as the 11th Director of the National Economic Council and was the chief economic advisor to President Donald Trump from 2017 to 2018. He was the president and chief operating officer of Goldman Sachs from 2006 to 2017.
Cohn was one of the most influential voices in the Trump administration.
Source: Freakonomics radio