(Finance) – Il President of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, Austan Goolsbeewould like to see more favorable inflation data before deciding on a rate cut, although he does not explicitly rule out the possibility that this could happen in March.
“We’ve had seven months of really good inflation reports, right around or even below the Fed’s target,” the banker said in an interview on Bloomberg Television, adding: “so if we continue to get more data like the ones we got, I believe we should be on the road to normalization.”
For Goolsbee, a rate cut in March is unlikely, but he does not rule it out, unlike what he said Chairman of the US Federal Reserve, Jerome Powell who, during an interview given to the “60 Minutes” program on the American television network CBS, reiterated the need not to be in a hurry to cut rates on fed funds before having more confirmation of the sustainable slowdown in inflation.
“We just want to be more confident before making that very important decision to start cutting interest rates,” Powell said, underlining “the danger of acting too soon.”
Inflation has fallen significantly over the past year, and quite sharply over the past six months. We are making good progress. The work is not done and we are very committed to ensuring that price stability is fully restored for the benefit of the public,” the Federal Reserve chairman said.
According to Powell, “the danger of acting too soon it’s that the work isn’t done yet and that the really good data that we’ve had over the last six months somehow turns out not to be a true indicator of the direction of inflation. We don’t think this is the case. But the most prudent thing to do is to give ourselves some time and see that the data continues to confirm that inflation is falling to 2% sustainably.”