James Bullard, Interview: Peoria Magazine

Page(s): 5

“Well, we’re getting plenty of criticism from all sides, so that makes me think that we’ve probably handled it about right … It’s not easy to track the economy. It’s a very large object — $20 trillion plus per year in total GDP and national income.”

“I would say about … whether we’re in recession or not that there’s a discrepancy … GDP growth has been negative in the first quarter and the second quarter of this year. Usually, the rule of thumb is that that would be a recession. But there is no actual hard and fast rule about that. Labor markets were very, very strong through the first half of the year, and it’s really hard to say there’s a recession when unemployment is 3.5 percent and you added 2.7 million jobs in the first half of the year.”

“This isn’t the kind of behavior you would expect if firms actually felt like it was a recessionary environment. They’d be cutting workers, not adding workers. So at least for now, it doesn’t look like we’re in a recession. Now others have been predicting that maybe we’ll be in recession in … 2023 sometime, but that’s a hazardous business, very hard to guess exactly how the economy will evolve over that kind of time horizon. So, I don’t think there’s a lot of information content to those kinds of forecasts.”