Chicago Fed President Austan Goolsbee expressed a cautious optimism in an interview with Marketplace Radio yesterday, noting that the focal point of discussions surrounding interest rates might soon shift.

Goolsbee acknowledged “overall level of inflation is still above where we want to be.” Despite the circumstances, he demonstrated a semblance of confidence that “There’s a growing confidence that we can pull it off.”

However, he asserted that the achievement wasn’t set in stone, adding a note of caution: “that’s not a guarantee.”

Goolsbee foresees a change in narrative in the coming times. Instead of deliberating on the scale of rate hikes, he envisaged that the discourse would gravitate towards the duration for which rates should be maintained at the established levels to steer the economy back on the desired path.

Putting it succinctly, he remarked, “We are very rapidly approaching the time when our argument is not going to be about how high should the rates go.”

Elaborating on this, he stated, “it’s going to be an argument of how long do we need to keep the rates at this position before we’re sure that we’re on the path back to the target.”

New York Fed President John Williams, engaged in a discussion moderated by Bloomberg yesterday, where he noted that while is “pretty clear we’re restrictive” on monetary policy, there remains “still an open question as we go forward.”

Williams expressed optimism that “things are moving in the right direction and we’ve got policy in a good place.” However, he insisted on the continuous need to be “data-dependent” and closely watch economic developments to make informed decisions regarding monetary policy trajectory.

He urged for sustained focus on comprehensive data analysis, stating, “We’ll have to keep watching the data carefully analyzing all of that and really asking ourselves the question: is this sufficiently restrictive.”

Boston Fed President Susan Collins struck a note of caution and restraint in todays remarks, suggesting that while policy rates may be reaching their peak, further tightening could still be on the table, dependent on “holistic data assessment.”

“This phase of our policy cycle requires patience, and holistic data assessment, while we stay the course,” Collins asserted.

Collins emphasized the challenge of discerning meaningful trends in economic data, cautioning that “it is difficult to extract the signal from the noise.”

“If the improvement is fleeting, further tightening could be warranted,” she warned.

Most notably, Collins was reluctant to embrace the notion that recent improvements in economic indicators necessarily signal a taming of inflationary pressures.

“There are promising developments, but given the continued strength in demand, my view is that it is just too early to take the recent improvements as evidence that inflation is on a sustained path back to 2%,” she said.