Neel Kashkari, Interview: Q&A with Travelers Institute President Joan Woodward

“We’re still trying to work hard to engineer what we call a soft landing. And one of the dangerous things about economics is if everybody believes a recession is coming, then everybody will take effort to try to protect themselves and tighten their purse strings. And then that behavior makes it more likely that a recession happens because everybody pulls back at the same time, and it’s getting a lot of attention. There’s a lot of coverage in the news, in the financial press about is a recession coming and whatnot. And so there is the danger that we’re going to talk ourselves into a recession even if the underlying fundamentals don’t require it.”

“One of the biggest challenges we face is that we know that the full effects of monetary operates with a lag. It takes a year or two for the full effects of interest rate increases to work their way through the economy … yes, do I think inflation is going to level out over the next few months, the services, the core inflation and then that would position us sometime next year to potentially pause. That’s my best guess right now, but we need to actually see what happens.”