Tom Barkin, Interview: Montgomery County Chamber of Commerce
“Now on the other side, I get questions from people asking whether the Fed ought to move faster. We have moved at 50 basis points at a time in the past. We’ve even moved faster than that, and we certainly could do it, again, if we felt like it was necessary to prevent either expectations from an anchoring, or because we starts seeing inflation accelerating. But I guess I’d just say this is all a balancing act, you normalize rates to contain inflation, but if you overcorrect, you start to affect employment, which is the other part of our mandate. I just think that both inflation and employment are still being heavily influenced by the combination of pandemic era, supply and participation pressures, and the war on Ukraine. I just think it’s going to take us a little while to meet the dynamics of whatever the post-pandemic economy looks like.”