Fed chair Jerome Powell said yesterday that “now is not the time to be talking about exit” from the asset purchase program. He added, “another lesson of the global financial crisis, is be careful not to exit too early.”

“We’ll let the world know. We’ll communicate very clearly to the public and we’ll do so, by the way, well in advance of active consideration of beginning a gradual taper of asset purchases,” he added. “That wouldn’t be a reason to raise interest rates unless we see troubling inflation or other imbalances that could threaten achievement of our mandate.”

On the outlook, Powell said, “we’ve got to get through this very difficult period this winter with the spread of COVID, but as the vaccines go out and we get COVID under control, there’s a lot of reason to be optimistic.”

St. Louis Federal Reserve President James Bullard told CNBC, “I’d support starting the taper in November.” He added, “I’ve been advocating trying to get finished with the taper process by the end of the first quarter next year because I want to be in a position to react to possible upside risks to inflation next year as we try to move out of this pandemic.”

But he also emphasized “there’s no reason for us to commit one way or another at this point,” regarding interest rate hike. “I just want to be in a position in case we have to move sooner that we’re able to do so next year in the spring or summer if we have to do so.”

He noted that a supply shock alone cannot cause inflation”. But, “a supply shock being accommodated by very easy monetary policy, it’s those two things that lead to the inflation.” Yet, he’s not concerned with the risk of a 1970s-style stagflation since “the probability of recession is exceptionally low at this point.”

St Louis Fed President James Bullard said there’s not much of an “imperative” about a new fiscal package now.”It seems like, at least in some broad macroeconomic type of calculation, we have enough resources to cover this,” he said in a Bloomberg interview.

“We might be able to sustain a recovery through this,” he said. “I’m hopeful we still have enough in the pipeline to push us through, get the growth going in the second half of the year. That certainly seems to be what’s happening in the third quarter. I think that will continue in the fourth quarter and the first part of next year.”

Boston Fed President Eric Rosengren said yesterday that “fiscal policy is the right tool for this time”. It’s “tragic that it has not been deployed already”. He also noted that his economic outlook was much weaker than other Fed policymakers because additional fiscal stimulus was not counted in.

“Most of my colleagues had an assumption that there was going to be additional fiscal stimulus. I had a somewhat different assumption,” he said. “I assumed no fiscal stimulus until the beginning of next year. As a result my forecast was much weaker than many of my colleagues.”

Rosengren also said the recovery from the pandemic was made more difficult due to the ” slow build-up of risk in the low-interest-rate environment that preceded the current recession”. He noted that commercial real estate firms have “gradually increased risk by taking on more leverage, which magnifies returns with good outcomes – but also magnifies losses when bad outcomes occur.