John Woods, vice chair and CFO at Citizens Bank, discusses his outlook on the economy heading into 2025.
Transcript:
CONWAY GITTENS: And where are you finding optimism or where are you seeing or where are you feeling the most optimistic when it comes to the economy.
JOHN WOODS: Yeah, when it comes to the economy, I think the real question is whether we’re going to end up with a Goldilocks soft landing. And a year ago, we had some concerns. Frankly, if I go back to the beginning of 2023, most of us thought we were going to have a recession by the end of ’23. You can check your watch. It’s September of ’24. No recession and recession odds have been falling. That’s really great. I mean, the ability to have rates come down without unemployment rising too much really feels like a possibility, which a year, year and a half ago, we would have said was unlikely.
So I’m excited to be able to say that soft landing is still a possibility for us as the Fed is bringing rates down. And if we can bring rates down, not have unemployment, which is one of the Fed has a dual mandate price stability and full employment, for the labor market, if we can see rates come down and ensure that unemployment doesn’t rise too much and keep inflation under control, that’ll be great for everybody. And there’s a real possibility to see that as we get into 2025. It is really positive to see a more normalized yield curve where we have the two year rate about 20 basis points below the 10 year, the 10 year rate. That’s very encouraging and is reflective of a more normalized growth environment. And so that’s something that I’m looking forward to seeing as we get into 25.
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