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.”

Dallas Fed President Robert Kaplan said in a telephone interview that if Fed makes the pledge to keep rates near-zero into 2023, “you need to fulfill it, unless there’s an extraordinary reason why you can’t…. My worry was that this would encourage in the shorter run more risk- taking and maybe create imbalances and instabilities.”

As the economy recovers, the so call-neutral rate will rise. In that case, he said, “if you keep your setting of the fed funds rate exactly where it is, you are actually increasing the level of accommodation.” If unemployment rate approaches 3.5% while inflation is a little below 2%, ” do you actually want to be increasing the level of accommodation? I don’t know if you do or don’t, and that’s the point,” he added.

In the remarks released ahead of Tuesday’s testimony, Fed Chair Jerome Powell said “economic activity has picked up from its depressed second-quarter level:. Economic indicators showed “marked improvements” including household spending, housing, business fixed investment and labor. However, both employment and overall economic activity “remain well below their pre-pandemic levels”. The path ahead continues to be “highly uncertain”.

“A full recovery is likely to come only when people are confident that it is safe to reengage in a broad range of activities,” he added. “The path forward will depend on keeping the virus under control, and on policy actions taken at all levels of government. Fed remains “committed to using our full range of tools to support the economy for as long as is needed.”

Full remarks here.

Minneapolis  Fed President Neel Kashkari explained in an article the reasons for his dissent to the latest FOMC statement. He said, “I would have preferred the Committee make a stronger commitment to not raising rates until we were certain to have achieved our dual mandate objectives.”

His own proposed language was: “The Committee expects to maintain this target range until core inflation has reached 2 percent on a sustained basis.” “By eliminating both the direct reference to our assessment of maximum employment and any forecast of inflation climbing, this proposed language guards against the risk of underestimating slack in the labor market. ” he added.

Separately, Atlanta Fed President Raphael Bostic said he’s comfortable with inflation above 2% but wold look at more at the “trajectory than level”. If inflation went up to 2.3% but appeared stable, “that would be fine”. On the other hand,  “if we were at 2.2 and the next quarter at 2.4 and then at 2.6 that trajectory would give me concern”.