RenMac is joined by banking and payments veteran Howard Mason and digs into a soft payroll report, Chair Warsh&#x27;s price-stability regime shift, and firming real rates. The team questions how the Fed actually delivers on price stability while hawks fill the vacuum, and turns to a market cycle clock stuck in its worst zone, thinning semiconductor leadership, embers of private credit stress, the yen carry trade and the oil-and-gas round trip.

RenMac Off-Script: State of the Fed Disunion

RenMac

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**Podcast:** RenMac

## Transcript

RenMac Off-Script originated as a weekly internal research meeting designed to summarize and discuss what happened in Washington, the markets, and the economic data over the past week. It was always intended to be and remains a free-flowing conversation with no discernible objective other than to extract the wisdom and opinion of our analysts and their expertise. This is a conversation among colleagues. Individual circumstances are unique and nuanced.

Do not mistake these conversations for investment advice, because it's not. Here we go. All right. Welcome to RenMac Off-Script, where we openly discuss markets, economics, policy, history, and life. It is Thursday, July 2nd, 2026. I'm Neil Dutta. I'm Jeff deGraaf. I'm Neil Dutta. And I'm Howard Mason. PADS is off this week celebrating our nation's 250th.

And in his stead, we have a resident Englishman just to haze him about what exactly happened in that loss 250 years ago. Welcome, Howard. I'm much more concerned about the loss that happened earlier this week as England failed to beat New Zealand at cricket. But thank you for the welcome. Yeah, I know. And Neil's trolling you with that USA shirt, too. Well done, Neil.

Well, I'm just, I had this on from yesterday's World Cup match that I was watching with my boys. Go Team USA. That's a crappy red card. Trump asked me something about that red card to Balogun. I mean, the FIFA Peace Prize winner should absolutely intervene. Like, this weekend. You never know. He's done crazier things than that.

For our listeners, if you don't know Howard Mason, you should. There's probably no one on Wall Street who has a longer career and better handle on the interplay of banking, payments, monetary, plumbing and the rates market than Howard Mason. So given just what's going on in the world right now, I thought it'd be great to have him on. So I'm kidding when I say we're going to haze him about the 250th anniversary of the U.S. I do want to start, though, with the payroll report that came out this morning because that was the big news from the data.

So, Neil, let's kick it off with you and talk about what you saw in that report. Well, there was a lot in that report. I think on net, you know, if you're one of these overheating economic growth bulls, this report was an obvious disappointment. But I don't think it should change anyone's overarching views on the economic outlook. So that's sort of where I am. I mean, I think it's the labor market stable.

I wouldn't, you know, like maybe a month ago, you could say at best the labor markets were reaccelerating and at worst they were stabilizing. Now it feels like, you know, at best they're stabilizing, at worst they're decelerating a little. So it just sort of takes a little bit of cream off the top of the labor market distribution, you could say. But beyond that, I don't really, you know, I wouldn't glean too much from it.

You know, the markets are doing what y...

RenMac Off-Script: State of the Fed Disunion

Transcript

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RenMac Off-Script: State of the Fed Disunion

Transcript

Built for investment professionals

Every day you wait, your competitors are findingedge in conversations you're not hearing.

Every day you wait, your competitors are finding
edge in conversations you're not hearing.