2025 Year in Review

About this episode

The episode discusses the major economic events of 2025 and their implications for the future.

The US economy entered 2025 in a delicate balance but quickly faced several federal policy shocks. Tariffs, changes to immigration policy, and efforts to trim federal spending dominated headlines and complicated investors’ ability to identify underlying economic momentum. By the end of the year, the unemployment rate had risen to 4.6% but growth was tracking above 2%, inflation was above the Fed’s target but showed few signs of massive tariff pass-through, and the bond market was cautiously steady. In this episode, we talk with FHN Financial’s Chris Low and Sophia Kearney-Lederman about the biggest macroeconomic stories of 2025, what surprised us the most this year, and what we’ll be watching closely in 2026.

People in this episode

Host: Will Compernolle

Guests: Chris Low, Sophia Kearney-Lederman

Topics covered

• US economy
• federal policy
• unemployment
• inflation
• macroeconomic trends
• investing

Keywords

• US economy
• federal policy shocks
• unemployment rate
• inflation
• bond market
• investors
• macroeconomic stories

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: FHN Financial

Places: US

More episodes of Simply Put

• Mike Ashton on How the Market Expresses Inflation Expectations · June 12, 2026 · 35 min
• Alexis Maxwell on How Rising Fertilizer Costs Drive Food Inflation · May 29, 2026 · 29 min
• Emanuel Mönch on the Post-Pandemic Term Premium · May 15, 2026 · 27 min
• Stan Veuger on the Economic Risks of Population Decline · May 1, 2026 · 27 min
• Jeff Lacker on Shrinking the Fed’s Balance Sheet · April 17, 2026 · 51 min
• SPECIAL PODCAST: Rachel Ziemba on the Strait of Hormuz · April 9, 2026 · 41 min