Atlanta Fed President Raphael Bostic said yesterday, “we are well on the road to substantial progress toward our goal”, and July’s 943k job growth was “definitely quite encouraging in that regard.”

“My sense is if we are able to continue this for the next month or two I think we would have made the ‘substantial progress’ toward the goal and should be thinking about what our new policy position should be,” he said.

“Right now I’m thinking in the October-to-December range, but if the number comes back big” as with the last report “or maybe even a little bigger, I’d be open to moving it forward,” Bostic said. “If the number really explodes, I think we would have to consider that.”

Also, he said he favored a “balanced” approach on tapering both the MBS and treasuries purchases at the same fate, and “going relatively fast”. “The economy is in a much different place today” and “I am pretty confident these markets are going to continue to function even with a more rapid withdrawal, and I would be willing to lean into that to try to get us to complete the taper in a shorter period than what we have done in previous rounds.”

Boston Fed President Eric Rosengren said yesterday if the US continues to have job growth like the last two months, with “very substantial payroll employment gains”, then by September meeting, the “substantial further progress” criteria should be met. That would “imply starting to taper sometime this fall”.

“If you continue to purchase assets, the reaction primarily is in pricing, not so much in employment,” he added. “I don’t think asset purchases are having the desired impact on really promoting employment.”

According to the July Survey of Consumer Expectations by the New York Fed, median one-year-ahead inflation expectations were unchanged at record 4.8%. Also, 3-year inflation expectation rose further from 3.6% to 3.7%, hitting the highest level since August 2013.

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Minneapolis Fed President Neel Kashkari said yesterday, “if we see a very strong labor market this fall, the way I’ve been expecting, then I think we could say we probably have made ‘substantial further progress.'”

However, the “wrinkle, now, is Delta”. He added, “if Delta causes the labor market to heal much more slowly, then that’s going cause me to step back”

“It’s so frustrating for all of us that the Delta variant is surging the way that it is,” Kashkari said. “I was cautiously optimistic a month ago that it seemed like we had the light at the end of the tunnel … and could return to normal.”

Fed Governor Christopher Waller said yesterday that his outlook is very much that the economy is “going to recovery”. And, “we will be able to pull back on accommodative monetary policy potentially sooner than others think.”

He repeated his “high hopes” for July and August job numbers, and expected the labor market to recover 85% of pandemic job loss by September. Fed could start to taper asset purchases in October if these two reports show 800k to 1m job growth each.

“My base case is that the inflation we’re seeing is somewhat transitory, that there will be some relief in the fourth quarter of this year on price pressures,” Waller added.