DoubleLine Round Table Prime 2025: Macro Outlook

During the macroeconomic segment of Round Table Prime’s 2025 edition (0:06), participants, among other issues, deliberate the future path of inflation, premature Trump administration assumptions at the Federal Reserve, the hidden but deepening distress of the U.S. consumer, the transformational unknowns of artificial intelligence and an awakening among Americans to their political class having abandoned them. Coming together for Round Table Prime are DoubleLine CEO Jeffrey Gundlach and moderator DoubleLine Deputy Chief Investment Officer Jeffrey Sherman with their “returning champions” James Bianco, President and Macro Strategist at Bianco Research; Danielle DiMartino Booth, Founder and Strategist of Quill Intelligence; Charles Payne, CEO-Founder of Wall Street Strategies and Fox Business Anchor; and David Rosenberg, Founder and President of economic consultancy Rosenberg Research & Associates. Round Table Prime 2025 was held Jan. 9 at DoubleLine’s downtown L.A. office.
Topics include:
(1:29) James Bianco’s outlook for an environment of higher structural inflation of 3% to 4%, a secular change from 40 years of disinflation that means “a 4% or 5% interest rate world being fairly normal.”
(3:58) Fed Chair Jerome Powell, in Jeffrey Gundlach’s view, is back to “oversteering,” as evidenced in “probably his worst press conference ever” on Dec. 18. due to his hyper focus on short-term inflation prints.”
(6:14) The Fed’s dilemma, Mr. Gundlach summarizes: unemployment, above-target inflation and only one policy tool to implement the Fed’s dual mandate. “Jay Powell now has one foot on the dock and one foot in the canoe. And you know what happens when they drift apart. You’re going to get wet.”
(9:56) A resumption in disinflation, David Rosenberg forecasts, is in the cards for 2025, notwithstanding the bottoming out of recent inflation prints. Service prices have been “the frustrating piece of this pie,” and are set to ease thanks to disinflation in housing and auto insurance premiums. Other disinflationary factors are tame commodities, “China exporting its deflation to the rest of the world” and the “productivity game changer” of artificial intelligence.
(18:36) In Powell’s Dec. 18 news conference, Danielle DiMartino Booth spots a major shift in the Fed’s focus: “Super core inflation’s out the window. What Powell is focused on right now is market-based core PCE.”
(27:37) The inflationary/disinflationary impact of deportation of illegal immigrants and layoffs of federal workers under President-elect Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
(29:24) The prospect of artificial intelligence, as Charles Payne notes, rendering hundreds of millions of jobs obsolete. AI means a “productivity miracle” but also the end of “60% of today’s jobs. In “the gulf between here and there, what do human beings do? That’s what Andrew Wang ran on, right? Universal basic income.”
(35:42) In the wake of his statements on Panama, Canada and Greenland, how to interpret the President-elect’s rhetoric. “Trump speaks in metaphors,” Jeffrey Gundlach says. “Panama is probably a 10. As for a Greenland, we’ve been here before. Immense tariffs on Denmark? I don’t think that’s going to happen.”
(38:15) An awakening among Americans to the idea that the political class has abandoned them.