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US economy is heading for soft landing, FT survey says

Discussion Questions

• What is the projected GDP growth for the US in 2024 and 2025, according to the survey?

• How is the unemployment rate expected to change by the end of this year, and how does it compare to the current rate?

• What does a ‘soft landing’ in an economy refer to, and how does this article suggest the US is achieving it?

• What actions is the Federal Reserve expected to take next, and why is this important for the economy?

• How do the economic platforms — potential future fiscal policies and trade policies — of Donald Trump and Kamala Harris differ, according to the article?

Extended Learning

Watch the video: “Why Soft Landings Are Basically Economic Nirvana” (4:48)

• What are the risks of relying on the Federal Reserve’s interest rate policies to achieve a “soft landing,” considering that economies are always moving?

• Why might some economists argue that attempting to “control” the economy through interest rate adjustments is like trying to land a plane in turbulent conditions?

• Given the complexity of global factors like energy prices and consumer behaviour, how much influence do policymakers have in ensuring a stable economic outcome?

• How might the analogy of an aeroplane “landing” overlook the reality that economic conditions, like inflation and unemployment, are always subject to change and can’t be perfectly controlled?

Conclusion

In light of the discussion around soft landings, market dynamics and the role of policy, do you think long-term economic stability is better achieved through government intervention, like the Federal Reserve’s interest rate policies, or by allowing market forces and individual decisions to guide the economy? Why?

Joel Miller and James Redelsheimer, Foundation for Economic Education.
Click here for FEE FT Classroom Edition with classroom-ready presentations and suggested answers for teachers.

UNDER-pressure Secret Service recruiters are facing a battle to woo Gen Z and Millennial agents who don’t have the mentality to serve, a former high-ranking agent has warned.

Cheryl Tyler, a retired Secret Service agent and training instructor in the agency’s Protection Section, warned that many younger would-be recruits don’t have the mindset for the work, and don’t want to do the strenuous hours required.

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Speaking to The U.S. Sun, Tyler, who was also the first female African American Secret Service agent, said that this critical lack of suitable candidates was coming as the agency was desperate for more bodies as it faced “challenging and hostile” conditions.

Her comments come in the wake of July’s attempted assassination of Donald Trump at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, and last Sunday’s arrest of a gunman spotted with a rifle on one of the former president’s golf courses.

Eerie footage showed Mar-a-Lago on lockdown following the incident at the weekend.

On Friday, acting Secret Service chief Ronald Rowe admitted at a press conference that “complacency” had led to the security failures that culminated in the attempt on Trump’s life two months ago.

He repeated calls he made earlier this week for a “paradigm shift” in the agency, including more agents and resources to deal with the increasing challenges it faces.

But Tyler, who spent 15 years at the Secret Service defending presidents, world leaders, and celebrities, warned that recruiting more agents was easier said than done.

“It’s not like all of a sudden they’ll have 500 new agents and they’re there and ready to go,” she said. “It’s going to take time.”

She went on: “It takes a while to go through that training, and then, once you get through the training, it’s still another period of time before you understand what you really are doing and get a grasp of it.”

Tyler added that there were many preconceptions about the Secret Service.

Some agents on protection details can spend up to 200 nights a year away from home.

“That’s a young person’s job,” Tyler added.

But she expressed fears many Millenials and Gen Zers lack sufficient stamina to do the job.

“I think that’s the bigger challenge, not only for the Secret Service but for law enforcement in general,” she said.

“It is tough. It’s a new generation, and they like their privacy and they like to work nine to five, and these kinds of jobs don’t allow that.”

She added: “There’s a different type of mindset for this job.”

Tyler blamed Covid for changing “work ethics for every genre there is in every industry.”

“The challenge is on top of needing more people, but the challenges of hiring more people and getting them to stay is even tougher,” she added.

Tyler warned that this crisis in finding suitable candidates was coming at the worst possible time for America.

“The Secret Service is at the present time in the crosshairs of society,” she said.

“We’re living in very challenging and unfortunately hostile environments right now and hopefully, that will soon dissipate, but in the meantime, in order for the agency and the agents to do their jobs successfully, there are going to need to be additional changes in how they approach different scenarios.”

NEW TECH, NEW THREATS

Tyler explained how she believed that cultural shift began during Barack Obama’s presidency, when “subtle” changes to the threats faced by the agency changed.

“Social media technology has put everybody on 24-hour availability,” she said. “Technology has been our friend and our foe.”

One big change brought by technology, Tyler said, is the ease with which it has enabled people to make anonymous threats to prominent individuals.

This, she argued, has left the Secret Service and other government agencies around the world facing a major challenge in “trying to keep up with the pace of technology and drawing the line in the sand without people feeling that they’ve been muzzled and can’t speak their freedoms.”

It’s a new generation, and they like their privacy and they like to work nine to five, and these kinds of jobs don’t allow that

Cheryl TylerFormer Secret Service agent

Earlier this week, new white tents and extra guards appeared outside of Trump Tower in Manhattan – just some of the added security measures being brought in to protect the former president.

Bulletproof glass is now in place at all of Trump’s rallies in the wake of Butler.

Similarly, beefed-up security presences were seen around Melania Trump.

But Tyler said many of the biggest changes in security were taking place in ways not visible to the average American.

“There are a lot of things that don’t need to be shared with the public, and people get upset, but that’s okay,” she said.

“The United States is a very unique and different place. We live in our own bubble. We live with a comfort of feeling protected and safe all the time, and not all countries are like that.

“Sometimes we have to seep back and realize that we are unique,” she added.

“We are special. It’s not complacency. It’s the fact that there are people that do jobs for a living for a reason to keep us all safe, and to keep those who are running to be leader of the free world safe.”

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Tyler said that the job of a Secret Service agent is “to ensure the safety of that person who is the leader of the free world, and sometimes we don’t need to all know what’s going on in order to do that.”

And while technology could provide support to the work of the agency, Tyler reiterated that “the one thing they do need is more people; technology is not the solution solely by itself to operate this agency.”

She referred to reports that the Secret Service is considering bringing former agents out of retirement to help with the added pressure.

“You need somebody who has the stamina and the energy, and can work those long hours and shift changes and demands that come with it, and being on call all the time,” she said. “A campaign year is a tough year.”

DESPERATE FOR AGENTS

Even before last weekend’s events in West Palm Beach, lawmakers and pundits have expressed fears that the Secret Service is struggling to deal with its increased challenges.

The arm of the agency that provides direct protection to presidents, vice presidents, and their families has shrunk by 10% in the past year.

The number of agents who guard senior officials, known as protective operations agents, is down from 4,027 in 2014 to 3,671 this year, according to the latest congressional budget figures.

In July, an NBC report claimed the Secret Service faced chronic understaffing for high-profile roles, as well as competition from private sector security, where many agents often go to find higher-paying and less grueling jobs.

This is despite warnings from Congress that more agents are needed to avoid compromising the agency’s mission.

Ronald Rowe, who took over from former director Kimberly Cheatle in the wake of the Butler shooting and subsequent inquiry, warned on Friday of existential issues facing the agency.

In the wake of the shooting carried out by Thomas Crooks, a new video showed how the would-be assassin was able to calmly approach the rally and get in position with his rifle.

“It is important that we hold ourselves accountable for the failures of July 13, and that we use the lessons learned to make sure that we do not have another failure like this again,” he said.

But he described Sunday’s events, which resulted in the arrest of potential would-be assassin Ryan Wesley Routh, as a success, saying that the agent who spotted him “identified a threat” before taking “swift action to be able to mitigate that.”

The House of Representatives on Friday passed a bill ensuring the Secret Service will provide the same levels of protection to presidential and vice presidential candidates as it does to the sitting president and VP.

This follows allegations Donald Trump was denied extra security he requested ahead of the attempt on his life at Butler.

Last month, a former Secret Service agent warned there would be another attempt on Trump’s life before the election, speaking weeks before events in West Palm Beach.

Now the Enhanced Presidential Security Act will head to the Senate.

“While July 13 is a failure, we’re not proud of it, but we certainly have been rising to this moment,” Rowe said, adding that his agents “are working tirelessly to make sure that the people we protect are safe.”

Henry Mance’s article (“The Lunch Bunch”, Life & Arts, September 14) analysing 30 years of “Lunch with the FT” missed one important aspect of these articles — the light shed on the character of the interviewers.

More subtle and indirect than revelations about the interviewees, this is a major reason why these lunch reports are so enjoyable.

Some interviewers give themselves a central role, making their own opinions clear. Some allude to their own histories, while others are more reticent. Some are clearly greedier than others going for all three courses despite the more puritanical tastes of the interviewees. And some have a great eye for detail, with graphic descriptions of the setting, the food, the clothes worn by those interviewed and the behaviour and attitudes of the waiters and waitresses, while others concentrate more single-mindedly on the conversation.

The interviewers are generally familiar to us regular readers of the FT. But these additional perspectives can throw a welcome new light on their regular columns.

Frances Stewart
Emeritus Professor of Development Economics, University of Oxford
London NW3

A third close contact of a patient in Missouri who was hospitalized with H5N1 bird flu has reported that they also experienced symptoms, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Friday.

The person, a health care worker, was not tested because their symptoms resolved before the investigation into the illnesses began, according to the CDC.

This is the second health care worker to report that they developed symptoms after being in contact with the patient. The first was tested for flu, and the results were negative, the CDC said.

The agency says the risk of H5N1 to the general population remains low.

Normally, health care workers are of high interest to disease detectives because they are often among the first to fall ill in outbreaks.

But this is far from a cut-and-dried case. The patient had underlying medical conditions that compromised their lung function, and when tested, the concentration of virus in a sample taken from them was low, which would normally suggest a mild or perhaps waning infection.

“At this point, my index of concern is still low,” said Dr. Michael Osterholm, who directs the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota. He is not involved in the Missouri investigation.

He notes that there are plenty of other infections going around that might cause respiratory symptoms.

“At the same time, we’ve had tremendous activity with Covid at that very time, as well as RSV, and so you would expect to see potentially several percent of the population having respiratory symptoms not due to influenza,” Osterholm added. In a hospital setting, workers would be even more likely to encounter those bugs.

Still, the discovery of additional suspect cases this late into the investigation raises questions.

“It’s unclear why this wasn’t reported with the other cases, and moves to identify influenza cases early are needed,” said Dr. Seema Lakdawala, an associate professor of microbiology and immunology at Emory University School of Medicine.

“We need more details of whether this is influenza infection or another respiratory virus. Serology will be useful in all these cases, as well as other contacts that may not have had symptoms,” said Lakdawala, who studies transmission of the H5N1 virus but also is not involved in the Missouri investigation.

“It is imperative that we identify any and all cattle herds that may have H5 in all states,” she said. “It is ridiculous that this information is still not known this many months after the first cattle cases were identified.”

Since the first bird flu cases in dairy cattle were detected in March, 213 herds have tested positive in 14 states. No positive herds have been reported in Missouri.

How the Missouri patient caught H5N1 is still a mystery. The Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services has interviewed the person as well as a household contact who got sick the same day but was not tested. They have reported no exposures to sick cows, birds or other animals, and no exposure to raw milk.

Both people have recovered from their illnesses. Investigators collected blood samples from them this week. The samples have been sent to the CDC for testing for antibodies to the virus that causes bird flu, which would indicate a previous infection.

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I much enjoyed reading Carola Long’s piece on Île d’Yeu — “‘Like Saint-Tropez 50 years ago’: western France’s little-known island escape” (Travel, Life & Arts, September 7) — in part because it rekindled marvellous memories from my student days. Since the time I visited the island in late September 1968, much touristic development seems to have taken place but thankfully, it appears, without detracting from the place’s charms.

That was the holiday I was introduced to sailing. I had jumped at the opportunity to join four fellow students at the University of Louvain (Belgium) for a week of adventure, sailing out from the mainland port of La Rochelle. One of our excursions was a day-long journey to Île d’Yeu.

The sailing was smooth, except when the wind suddenly completely died down, and the auxiliary engine also refused to start. As a result, our skipper worried that we would be too late to catch the high tide, and could run aground in the harbour before reaching the dock. He was spot on. At 7pm, as darkness fell, we were stuck in barely four feet of water, 50 metres from shore. Thankfully we got help and a rowing boat transported us to dry land.

In those days, along the waterfront, there were just a couple of café-restaurants. One was playing loud music celebrating a local wedding. We joined in and had food and wine too. At around 4am, under a full moon I recall we marvelled to see our boat gently rocking with the water, as the tide had turned.

The following day, after a good sleep on board, we did what your correspondent did, and rented bikes to explore, going from beach to beach.

At one of these beaches we swam, and were amazed by the temperature of the ocean water, like that of a baby’s bath, so close were we to the Gulfstream. In Île d’Yeu, you can enjoy the beach, even as late as October.

Henri Lorie
Chapel Hill, NC, US