A tenth on core CPI last week came from wireless telephone services, and Thomas Simons says that was T-Mobile retiring legacy plans nobody had been able to buy for years.
The market has the Federal Reserve raising rates on Wednesday and most of the commentary treats it as settled. Simons is one of the few economists still on the other side, and his case is assembled out of the line items in that report rather than out of a view about the chair.
"Widely expected is not universally expected."
Simons is chief US economist at Jefferies, and he was booked on set specifically to defend a forecast the market has priced against.
The full segment is covered here so you can skip it.
Here are the 4 insights that matter.
👤 Guest: Thomas Simons, Chief US Economist at Jefferies
🎙️ Host: Kelly Evans, who anchors The Exchange on CNBC
📰 Published: 14 September 2026 on CNBC's The Exchange
🟣 Apple Podcasts | 🔗 Episode page | ⏱️ 3 min
Key Takeaways
He is one of a handful of economists who do not expect a hike this week, and he says the language people use hides that
The chair's own hall-of-mirrors argument is the reason he should not feel locked in by market pricing
Simons finds it odd that a chair who built his philosophy on avoiding forward guidance would act because the market priced something
The case for holding is in the CPI detail rather than in the balance sheet
Airfares track jet fuel, lodging away from home rebounded after falling 5% in two months, and a tenth of core CPI came from wireless telephone services
That wireless contribution was a single company retiring plans nobody could still buy
Medical care commodities and services keep coming down, which he treats as the durable part
Saying any of this out loud would mean crediting the administration's policies, which is part of why the chair has not
1. Widely Is Not Universally
Kelly Evans introduced the segment on the consensus and then immediately picked at it: the Federal Reserve "is widely expected to raise interest rates on Wednesday. But my next guest is a holdout and that's why he's here." She noted that "widely expected to" is a phrase broadcasters reach for and told him he did not have to use it.
Simons took the opening: "Widely expected is not universally expected. No, there's a handful of us out here who."
Evans set out why she has some sympathy for the idea that Kevin Warsh has painted himself into a corner: "We're all saying this, and the market's going there because they perceive that that's what he wants to have happen," she said, citing Bill Dudley and others making the same point that morning
Her question was not whether a hold is defensible in the abstract but whether it is defensible after the guidance he has given — the speeches, and Jackson Hole in particular
2. The Hall of Mirrors
Simons' first answer turns the chair's own doctrine against the trap he is supposed to be in.
"One of the things that he's mentioned in the speech was this so-called hall of mirrors problem, right? Like the whole reason why he doesn't like forward guidance is specifically for this, right?" he said
The history behind the doctrine, in his account, is the post-pandemic inflation: "That he felt like in the past few years, immediately after the pandemic and when inflation was really starting to accelerate significantly, the Fed didn't act quickly enough because they hadn't set expectations well in advance, right? Like they didn't want to shock the market and that sort of thing."
Which makes the current setup self-contradicting: "So I find it interesting that someone who's kind of based his whole philosophy on communication, trying to get away from this would be locked in to doing something just because the market has priced it as such."
Evans agreed and said she thinks the chair has an independent streak and an agenda built on the mistakes of the past
3. What the CPI Detail Says
Evans pressed on what the chair could actually say at the press conference, given a Jackson Hole speech promising the inflation fight is not over — and asked whether the only remaining lever is the balance sheet.
Simons said the answer is simpler than that: "Well, there is the balance sheet, but I think it's actually just pretty simpler than that actually."
His case is that last week's CPI contains a disinflationary trend that the headline obscures: "Which is that there's a lot of data that was a lot of details within the CPI data even that we got last week that do support the case that there is this kind of disinflationary, you know, majority disinflationary trend going on, right?"
He went through the components one at a time. "Like it's one thing to look at airfares which are very clearly, clearly correlated with jet fuel prices and lodging away from home that had fallen 5% in the previous two months and rebounded," he said
The wireless line is the one he treats as an outright artifact: "And also, you know, we got a 10th on the core CPI from wireless telephone services. That really was just T-Mobile getting rid of some legacy plans that no one could have actually purchased for years now."
What is left after those, in his reading, is the part that keeps improving: "So I think that there's a lot more, you know, kind of positive trends within the inflation data, right? Like medical care, commodities and services keep coming down."
4. Why He Will Not Say It
"Why isn't he pointing all of this out?" Evans asked, and answered her own question with one: "Do you think it's because he doesn't want to be seen as a lackey for Trump?"
Simons conceded part of it: "There's part of that. I mean, you know, in talking about medical care, commodities and services, you kind of have to say that the administration's policies are working right."
He would not endorse the causal claim himself: "And I'm not 100% sure that correlation can be driven, you know, linearly as such."
The second reason he gives is the same doctrine as before, applied to data rather than to rates: "And I think also he doesn't want to, you know, if he is so gung ho against giving any forward guidance, then litigating the data ahead of time is not what he's going to do."
Bonus Insights
Evans framed the booking as an exception rather than a view. Simons was on set because he disagrees with the market, and the interview is structured as a defense of a minority forecast rather than as a preview of the meeting.
The host did most of the work on the political angle. The suggestion that the chair might be avoiding a dovish case because it would look like credit for the administration is hers, put to him as a question; he accepted a part of it rather than making the claim himself.
Simons never argued the Fed will not hike. He argued the case for holding exists and is stronger than the pricing implies, which is a different and narrower claim.
Simons' bottom line is that the reasonable case for standing pat is sitting in the detail of last week's CPI report, that the chair's own objection to forward guidance is the argument for not being bound by market pricing, and that the reason neither has been said out loud is political rather than analytical.
Products, Companies & Tools Mentioned
T-Mobile (The single company he blames for the wireless telephone services contribution to core CPI, which he says came from retiring legacy plans nobody could still buy)
Jefferies (Simons' firm; its US economics team is among the handful still forecasting no hike)
Books & Resources Mentioned
Kevin Warsh's Jackson Hole speech (The source of the hall-of-mirrors argument Simons uses, and of the hawkish guidance the host says has boxed the chair in)
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