Prof G Markets - What the Fed’s Third Rate Cut Means for 2026

Episode Date: December 11, 2025

Ed Elson discusses the Federal Reserve’s third interest rate cut with Mark Zandi, Chief Economist at Moody’s Analytics, unpacking what’s in store for the economy. Then, Scott Galloway shares his perspective on the SpaceX IPO. Finally, Ed highlights why MacKenzie Scott’s latest philanthropic efforts deserve more attention. Check out our latest Prof G Markets newsletter Follow Prof G Markets on Instagram Follow Ed on Instagram and X Follow Scott on Instagram Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Try Odu for free at Odu.com. That's ODOO.com. Today's number 18. That is how many hours koala bears spend asleep every single day. That makes koala bears the second sleepiest animal in the world just behind Mitch McConnell. Welcome to Prof.G. Markets, Matt. Let's check in on yesterday's market vitals. The major indices rallied following a federal reserve meeting. More on that in a moment. Meanwhile, Treasury

yields fell. The dollar slumped and Finally, Oracle shares dropped more than 10% in after-hours trading on lower-than-expected quarterly revenue. Okay, what else is happening? For the third time this year, the Federal Reserve cut interest rates by 25 basis points. However, a divide is growing on the Fed board. This decision marked the first meeting in six years where three Fed officials dissented. Two governors voted to hold rates steady, while Stephen Myron voted to cut by 50.

50 basis points, not 25. As for the bar of the head, the Fed's outlook calls for just one cut in 26, the S&P and the Dow, both hit session highs, as Chair Powell gave his remarks. Okay, here to take us through what happened with this Fed decision. We are speaking with Mark Zandi, chief economist of Moody's analytics. Mark, thank you for joining us again on Profi Markets. Ed, so good to be wissy. Thanks for the opportunity. Good to have you back. So this, this Fed decision here, we got another cut, third in a row, lowest level in three years. Let's just start with your initial reactions to what we saw today. Pretty much down the strike zone, as they would say, Ed, you know, markets, investors expected

the Fed to cut a quarter percentage point, and that's exactly what they did. There was widespread expectation that there would be a lot of dissension in terms of the decision. We got that as well. One dissenter wanted a 50 basis point cut in rates. A couple other Fed members wanted to hold policy on chains. That's unusual, but that was expected. And I think Chair Powell in the presser afterwards, after the release of the announced move,

made it clear that while there might be another rate cut in our future next year, you know, it's becoming much more data dependence. It's hard to know exactly what the path forward is. And I think investors knew that that was coming. So all on all, I thought it was, as I said, right down the strike zone. The dissension that we saw, three dissenting votes, first time that's happened in six years, as you say, there were two officials who said, let's hold interest rate steady. And then there was one, and this is Trump's guy, Stephen Myron, who said, no, let's cut by 50 bips instead of 25. Is that important?

I mean, what does that say about where we're at? Jerome Powell seemed to say that that wasn't really an issue or that didn't matter that much. What is your view? How important is it that we saw this level of dissension? Well, I think it's meaningful. I think it's explainable by the fact that the federal funds rate target. the interest rate the Fed controls is now pretty close to what might be considered the so-called neutral rate, the equilibrium or R-star, that rate at which policy is neither supporting or

restraining growth. That's not written in stone somewhere that we can go take a look. It's estimated. It's we policymakers get to it by intuition and feel. So as a result, there's a lot of debate about that. We're pretty close. And because we're pretty close, you can, it's not surprising you'd get people disagreeing about what their appropriate policy steps would be. The other thing that's going on, of course, is tariffs and highly restrictive immigration policy. And those policies, they weaken growth, which would argue for rate cuts. But they also raise inflation, which would argue for no rate cuts and maybe even increase all else being equal.

So that is another factor, you know, behind the disagreements and thus the sense. And then I also think, you know, Fed independence is probably playing a role here. You know, the president, President Trump has made quite clear he'd like input into the decision-making process at the Fed around interest rates is one of his recent appointees, Stephen Merritt, you mentioned that the former chair of the Council of Economic Advisors, wants a 50 basis point cut, which goes to what the president wants. The president wants lower interest rates and much lower interest rates. And that's also playing a role in this goes to the disagreement. and dissent. So a lot of cross currents here. So it's very unusual you see these kinds of disagreements, but in the current context, I think it makes a lot of sense. Yeah, it sounds like politics is playing a larger role right now than it has in the past. The other issue was

this lack of data. And we had Catherine Ann Edwards, an economist on the show recently, and she was not so sure that we would get a cut because her view was, you know, there are operating with a lot less data because of the shutdown, so the idea of changing policy maybe is not the right move. What exactly were they missing in terms of data? And how did that affect or not affect the decision that they ended up making? Well, jobs data and data on inflation, and that goes right to their back to their dual mandate. They're chartered with ensuring full employment, everyone's employed, and maintaining low, stable inflation, close to the 2% inflation target.

And we were missing data related to both those mandates. In fact, next week, we're going to get the October, November payroll employment data, which is critical data for understanding what's going on in the labor market. And the consumer price inflation data, we're not even going to get that for the month of October. We're only going to get that for November here, not to do some. future. So they were lacking a lot of data. But I do think the data we are seeing and getting, particularly on the labor market front, would suggest the economy is struggling. The job market is

really going down where fast. Job creation has come to a standstill. Unemployment is still low, 4.4%, but it is moving higher. And it's moving very quickly higher for certain groups, like young people, folks in the between the ages of 2024, their unemployment rates now over nine percent up, you know, three percentage points in the last couple of years. Minority group, minority rate, minority group unemployment rates are up a lot, the black unemployment rate. So there's, we were getting other data related to the labor market, saying roughly the same thing, so called war notices and layoff announcements. So I think there was enough information despite the government shutdown and the disruption to typical data for the, for, for

Fed officials to come to the conclusion that they still should be more focused on the mandate around jobs and full employment than the economy around inflation. And that's how they acted, and I think that was appropriate. We're coming to the end of the year here. So this will probably be the last time we see you in 2025, and then we'll be taking a break later. Do you have any thoughts on what 2026 is going to look like? And does this decision tell us anything about what might happen here with the economy. We're talking about the labor market issues, which, as you say, they're appearing to get worse, but then also inflation, which, I mean, doesn't seem to be getting a whole lot better. But if we are entering a lower interest rate environment, maybe that

means more spending, more earnings growth, expansion in the economy. What do you think we're going to see in 2026? Yeah, a lot of cross currents there. That's why there's so much confusion around The economy depends on, you know, what you're focused on which part of the economic elephant you're touching. Yeah. I mean, I think generally 2025 would characterize it as a year of growth. I mean, we did not go into recession. We continued to grow largely because of the boost created by AI, artificial intelligence, lots of different channels through which that's occurring. But it's a very fragile growth.

You know, it's hard to get very enthusiastic about how things are going when you're not creating any jobs. unemployment's on the rise. And, you know, particularly for many Americans, it's a tough economic environment. I mean, if you're in the top third, the income distribution, life is good, no problem. But if you're in the bottom two-thirds, particularly the bottom third, it's a struggle. The inflation's up. Hiring is down. You don't want to lose your job. You're grappling with higher debt payments, cards, student loans. And you're really not benefiting from. the rump in equity prices because you don't own any equity. So, you know, it really depends. And I think that that will characterize 2026. And I do think there is a lot of risk when the economy is not

creating jobs. That is not a place you want to be for very long. So hopefully, you know, we'll start to see hiring kick back into a higher gear and job growth resumes and we continue to push forward. But, you know, I worry that that won't be the case. that, you know, it'll be a tougher year. The one other thing I just throw into the mix, Ed, that's different from 25, that we differ in 26 than 25, is we're going to get a lot of fiscal stimulus, you know, the one big, beautiful bill act kicks into high gear here in 2026 tax cuts for businesses, accelerated depreciation, and tax cuts for individuals, tips, and overtime and salt and a bunch of other

stuff. So that should provide some juice. And, of course, the Fed's been cutting rates and, you know, all else equal, that should also support growth in 26. So I think it's going to be another kind of just uncomfortable year for many Americans with a lot of risk around that. But hopefully with a little bit of luck and that fiscal stimulus we kind of navigate through and avoid another year. We have another year without an economic downturn. Final question before we let you go here. We're going to have a new Fed chair in 26. Trump says he's found his guy, but he's not, he's being kind of

coy about it. People think it's going to be Kevin Hassett. Either way, we're going to have a new Fed chair. The Fed is saying we'll have one rate cut in 2026, but if Trump shakes up the composition of who's actually in the Fed, can we really trust those projections? I mean, how will the new Fed chair actually change things in terms of policy? Yeah, you make a great point. I mean, I think it does raise the odds that we see more rate cuts than markets are currently and seem to be anticipating next year. Yeah, I think, you know, because the independence of the Fed is under a lot of pressure already, and there's a lot of things, you know, going to happen here.

You mentioned Fed chair of J. Powell rolling off next May. And the other thing is the court case, right? Lisa Cook, who's a Fed member, was fired by the president. I honestly forgot. Right? So we'll have to see how that plays out. So, yeah, I think, you know, all else equal, you know, jobs. market, inflation, everything the Fed looks at, financial conditions, inflation expectations.

Now you've got to throw into the mix, kind of the political independence of the Fed, and that would argue all else equal for lower rates. Okay. Mark Zandi, really appreciate your time. Thank you very much. I will see you next year, probably. Yeah, anytime it. After the break, SpaceX is going public. If you're enjoying the show, give prophecy markets a follow. Support for this show comes from LinkedIn.

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world of more with Chase experiences, visit chase.com slash experiences. Benefits available only to eligible Chase card holders, deposit and credit card products provided by JPMorgan Chase Bank, N.A, member FDIC, terms, conditions, restrictions, and limitations apply. We're back with Profti markets. The biggest IPO in history is on the horizon. and Elon Musk's SpaceX is aiming to raise more than $30 billion next year at a $1.5 trillion valuation. That would eclipse Saudi Aramco's 2019 record raise and it would make it the largest offering ever.

The company hopes to list as soon as next summer and SpaceX expects to use some of the proceeds to build data centers in space. Okay, here to discuss this IPO. We are speaking with someone who's been very bullish on space lately, and that is Scott Galloway. Let's give them a call. Scott, good to see you. Good to be seen, Ed. How are you?

I'm doing well. Where are you? I am just outside the men's bathroom and the roof gardens at Kensington, which I'm pretty sure as a violation of every rule that the members are supposed. I have my camera out, and I'm loitering outside the men's room. I'm pretty sure that this will be the last time I'm calling you from roof gardens. I love it. live streaming to a very large audience from inside the club. But I do want to announce that I'm running for Senate from Minnesota.

You're not going to remember this guy, but there was a senator from Minnesota who was this homophobic motherfucker and, of course, he got caught trying to solicit blow jobs in the airport men's room at Minneapolis International Airport and he claimed it was just his wide stance. Anyways, I'm hovering outside of men's rooms. Let's talk about SpaceX, that's. Let's talk about SpaceX. We want to talk to you because SpaceX was your big pick for 2026. It's your tech of the year.

Now we've got the largest most important space company in the world going public, the largest IPO in history, if it happens, your reactions. So I think it's super exciting. I think this is an incredible company. There are a few products that I think have a greater delta between the office. offering and the rest of the competition and Starlink. I think it's just an incredible product. Also, I think SpaceX is one of the best-run companies in tech, Glenn Shotwell.

What they've achieved there is just staggering. So, I mean, I hate to say it because I don't know if you've ever sensed this, but I'm not a huge fan of Elon Musk, but I think SpaceX is an incredible company. And I think this could, I mean, as you said, our pick for 2026, the sector that will get the most cheap capital as it moves from ego and Haiti-Terry and bullshit billionaires going into space and all these phallic things going, you know, just above the Carmen line and then floating back line, it's going to go to connectivity, which is what this is. And then ultimately, I think the real juice next year is going to be in space defense, which I don't think gets enough attention. But in some, I'm pretty excited about it. Are you going to try to get into the IPO?

No, I mean, they're talking about $1.5 trillion. also I sold my Tesla I'm not I think it's an incredible product I logged off of X there's enough investment opportunities where I don't need to paint the fucking facts of a guy who's primary

you know his primary objective is to sponsor media companies and turn them into Nazi porn bars so yeah that's not a company I'm going to invest in but it is an incredible company and I mean there's some things there

90% of space launch capability right now in terms of material shot into space is from one company, SpaceX. They're now the only company in the world that can put men or women into space. Two-thirds of low Earth orbit satellites are from one company. And also, if you think of the greatest market capitalization or the greatest innovations in history in terms of shareholder value, it's been when a seminal technology declines massively in cost and processing power.

bandwidth all kind of came down 80 or 90% over a 10-year period. And that's what SpaceX has been able to do in terms of cost for kilogram to get into space. They brought it down, I think, 88% over the last 10 years. The other kind of the business-starting here, I'm kind of curiously at your take, but one of the observations I had looking at the numbers, SpaceX only did 13 billion last year, and this year it's only going to be 15. So the growth is not parabolic. But it's one of the reasons that Amazon's value is so enduring.

and that Open AI might be Netscape, and that is, digital companies can scale faster, but analog companies have much bigger modes, and that is to put in place distribution centers and some 47s, which Amazon has done, is really difficult, and it's difficult to kind of assail, if you will, whereas Open AI is trading at about a half a trillion dollars,

is growing much faster than SpaceX at a similar revenue multiple, but is much more vulnerable from open-weight, LLMs and the AI from China and from other competitors and Google and alphabet. But the bottom line is, it's very difficult to build a startup. Two guys in a dorm room at MIT can't build a viable competitor to a space launch company. And that's what's so incredible of that this company is. It's going to have moats that are just very difficult to cross because it's going from 13 to 15. and they're talking about a valuation of triple

of what Open AI is now that is going from 13 to much more than that this year because the reality is Open AI is very vulnerable. These digital companies scale up faster, but quite frankly, they're just more vulnerable. So it sounds like you're very bullish on the company. I'm pretty bullish on the company myself, but you don't want to invest because, I mean, let's say

you were given the opportunity. Elon Musk calls you not Elon Musk, but someone else. someone calls you tomorrow, they say, here's allocation, pre-IPO. You don't want to do it, one, because you don't like Elon and two, you mentioned the valuation there, one and a half trillion dollars. Why wouldn't you invest exactly? Well, one, I don't have many morals, but I do have a few. I just saw, there's just too many opportunities to, to, again, paint the fence as someone who is divisive.

And at 100 times revenues, you're talking about talent or like valuation. So I just, I mean, this is the problem of the public markets and you've talked about this a lot, is that most of the juice

will have been squeezed. It'll probably get a pop out of the gates because everybody wants on SpaceX. It's a great gift to give to a little Rachel for a botanist or whatever. But you're probably talking, if it goes out of one and a half, it'll pop to two.

And then it's trading it 150 times. revenue. So I think it's an incredible company. I think it's exciting. I think it'll ignite a new space race. But no, I'm not in some. I'm not an investor at a hundred times valuation of a guy whose primary export into Europe is not Rockets or Twitter. It's political division. All this bullshit calling for the breakup of the EU or showing up the nationalist rallies. I just think this concentrated, you know, power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely and this guy's on the verge of absolute power fair enough i will say you don't have many other options there all from the men's room at the kensington roof gardens i just want to know what people's faces are like the people who are around you

what are people saying is they walk into the bathroom right now and hear you on a live podcast some dude just said prop g but i'm not sure it's like good form at my age to be filming men going into a men's room I don't know if that's, like, good for their brand or mine. It's good for the brand. Give them a shout out. This is my first and last video from the Roof Garden. I think we did one last there. I miss Chiltern, Ed.

I miss Chiltern. This is rough. I know. I need someone to take me to Chey Margot in New York. Do you know anyone? Maybe like a 30 under 30 total fucking douchebag. Oh, that's good. That's good.

We'll do it. We'll do it. When you're back. All right, brother. And you're back. Until then, enjoy the roof. Take care. Hey, sir. Thank you, Scott.

Bye, nah. Mackenzie Scott just revealed details on her philanthropic work this year, including how much money she gave away. And the number is quite staggering. $7.2 billion. This year's annual total was announced with an update on her blog, which also attracts all of her contributions to date. And for those who don't know who McKenzie Scott is,

She is Jeff Bezos's ex-wife. She helped to start Amazon back in the 90s, and she now runs her non-profit yield giving, and it was through this nonprofit that these donations were made. So, $7.2 billion in 2025. Let's just put that number in context. That is more than the entire budget of the World Health Organization. It is also more than it costs to build the Suez Canal,

the Birch Khalifa, the Hoover Dam, and the Vegas sphere, combined. And that is on top of the $2.6 billion she gave the year before that, as well as the $2.1 billion the year before that. And so this brings her total philanthropic contributions to over $26 billion. So at this point, McKenzie Scott has given away more than a third of her net worth. And after this year, she is now in the list of the top 10 most giving philanthropists of all time. As for where the money actually went, about half of her gifts to date have gone to educational causes, almost 90% of causes in America. She's also given hundreds of millions of dollars to things like environmental conservation and economic opportunity and social equity non-profits.

The list goes on. But $26 billion, that is her total so far. So this isn't really a market story. It's not the kind of thing we usually cover. We usually talk about how much money people made, not how much they gave away. But we wanted to mention it because this is the kind of thing that really deserves more attention, more coverage, and more praise. In fact, I would argue that giving away $7 billion is far more impressive than making $7 billion. And I believe that that is why these kinds of contributions, these massive contributions, are so rare. And I can show you how rare they actually are. Even the richest few people in the world, people far richer than Mackenzie Scott, even they haven't given away nearly as much money as she's done. Elon Musk is worth over $490 billion.

Last year he gave away around $470 million, and that's less than 0.1% of his total net worth. By the way, most of that money went to entities he already controls. Bezos has given away about 2% of his net worth in his lifetime. Zuckerberg's given away about 2% as well. The average for American billionaires is about 3%. She's given away more than a third. So it would appear that it is actually easier to make lots of money, to make that amount of money, than it is to give away that amount of money.

And yes, getting rich takes a lot of skill. It takes ambition. It takes grit, patience, et cetera. And that is all very hard. But giving that money away requires something that is honestly harder. it means selflessness. It means kindness. It means running the risk of, yes, benefiting other people, but also at your own expense. Maybe there was something else you wanted to do with that money. Maybe you worked really hard for it. Maybe you were saving up for something. Maybe you were saving up

to rent out Venice for your wedding. There are infinite reasons to not give your money away. And so to give it away is simply braver and more impressive than, making it. Now, Mackenzie Scott deserves praise here, and that's what we're doing, but only so much praise. And what's great about her announcement and her blog post, which I encourage you to read, is that she actually recognizes that. She recognizes that, yes, she gave away a lot of money and it's a big number, but proportionally speaking, there are still many people who give away a lot more. In fact, she points out, $7 billion is only a tiny fraction of what's given away by Americans every year. only counting the money that is reported.

You know, she also points out that 70% of Americans give away both their money and their labor to people for free. And that can manifest in many different ways. It can mean literally giving money, or it could mean just taking the time out of your data, just show up for someone and help them. There are many ways in which people give, and yet so much of it, unfortunately, goes unrecognized and unreported. So that's why we wanted to recognize this contribution.

It's not all about McKenzie Scott, but it is a reminder of what is actually important and what is actually deserving of our respect. Okay, that's it for today. This episode was produced by Claire Miller, edited by Joel Passon, and engineered by Benjamin Spencer. Our associate producer is Alice from Weiss. Our research team is Dan Shalon-Isabella Kinsel,

Chris Nodonoghue and Mia Silverio, and our technical director is Drew Burroughs. Thank you for listening to Profty Markets from Profite Media. If you liked what you heard, give us a follow. I'm Ed Elson. Tune in tomorrow for an amazing conversation with Tom Lee. Support for this show comes from Odu. Running a business is hard enough,

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Try O-D-O-4-3 at O-D-O-D-com. That's O-D-O-O-O-O-com. Does it ever feel like you're a marketing professional just speaking into the void? But with LinkedIn ads, you can know you're reaching the right decision makers, a network of 130 million of them, in fact. You can even target buyers by job title, industry, company, seniority, skills, and did I say job title? See how you can avoid the void and reach the right buyers with LinkedIn ads. Spend $250 on your first campaign and get a free $250 credit for the next one. Get started at LinkedIn.com slash campaign.

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