Raphael Bostic, Interview: Bloomberg News (print only, excepts below)

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If a stronger-than-expected economy persists, “It’ll probably mean we have to do a little more work,” Bostic told Bloomberg News in a phone interview on Monday. “And I would expect that that would translate into us raising interest rates more than I have projected right now.”

Bostic said the committee could also consider moving back to a 50 basis-point hike if it needed to, though that’s not his expectation. He supported last week’s downshift in rates.

“It wouldn’t surprise me if we saw this quarter or the next come in stronger than people expect right now,” Bostic said, adding he’s focused on “imbalances between supply and demand” because too much demand can lead to higher inflation.

“Job one for us has got to be to get inflation back under control,” he said. “And I’m going to do all I can to see that we do that.”

“I like optionality, so I never want to foreclose any action, but I do think that a lot of this will depend on how the economy evolves relative to my expectations,” he said. “We understand what data dependence means and we’re going to try to avoid getting too locked in to just one approach.”

“Those last few tenths of a point can take a long time to be realized,” he said. “And so I want to make sure that we are in the right place before we start easing off our policy because the most important thing at this stage is to get our price stability measure as close to target as possible.”

“I’ve said for a long time that I thought there’s a lot of momentum in the economy and that there was a good chance that that momentum was going to be sufficient to absorb our policy tightening in ways that could help us avoid a recession,” he said.