First American's Fleming: Lower rates threaten to return the economy to 'normal'

Money Life with Chuck Jaffe

Mark Fleming, chief economist at First American Financial Corp., says the big news on Wednesday was not that the Federal Reserve started a rate-cutting cycle, but that it appears that there could be additional, aggressive rate cuts that could take an additional 1.5 percentage points off rates over the next 15 months. That rate cutting, Fleming says, reduces the risk of a deep recession, and the strength of the labor market also limits the possibility of a big decline. As a result, a year from now he expects to see a "lower mortgage rate, lower cost-of-credit rate environment -- with a relatively healthy economy, if not running at trend -- and low inflation," which he says would be a return to "normal." Todd Rosenbluth, head of research at VettaFi, looks at a fund saddled with keywords -- the WisdomTree International Hedged Quality Dividend Growth Fund -- and tells us which of those traits are so important now that the fund deserves to be ETF of the Week. Plus, in the Market Call, Dave Sekera, chief U.S. market strategist at Morningstar, talks fair-value investing and gives his take on how stocks will respond to the rate-cut environment.