James Bullard, Interview: Bloomberg Print (as published on the St. Louis Fed website)
‘’I was leaning toward 75 and the jobs report was reasonably good last Friday.”
“I wouldn’t let one data point sort of dictate what we are going to do at this meeting. So I am leaning more strongly toward 75 at this point.”
‘’The general strategy of trying to front-load these rate increases is working well and putting us in a position where we can have a level of the policy rate that is putting downward pressure on inflation very soon.”
“And sooner tends to be better in my mind.”
“I have felt Wall Street is underpricing the idea that inflation may just be relatively high and it may take quite a while to bring back to 2%. This would mean interest rates have to be higher for longer. That’s a scenario that is not garnering enough attention in today’s market pricing.”
“Hopefully it will go in the correct direction, which is lower, and that will be helpful. We are going to need to see more sustained, longer-run evidence. Not all the future reports will go in the right direction. Some will go up and some will go down. We understand we are going to have to have a preponderance of the data in favor of the view that inflation is clearly coming back on multiple measures to 2%.”
“We are just trying to get to a level of the policy rate that makes sense for this environment and from there we will be able to make judgments based on the data, whether to go up or down.”
“We have to get to the right level of the policy rate. And then at that point it’s kind of ordinary monetary policy: You might adjust up somewhat because the data came in unfavorably for your goals or keep it the same because you are about on track or decrease a little bit because the data has come in favorably for your goals. To me, that is kind of ordinary monetary policy.”
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