Chicago Fed President Charles Evans said on Monday that Fed’s policy has been “successful” in achieving the maximum employment mandate. It’s “less successful” regarding the inflation objective. And to fix this, he added, “Fed must be willing to embrace inflation modestly above 2 percent 50 percent of the time.” For him, he would “communicate comfort” with core inflation at 2.5%, as long as there is “no obvious upward momentum” while the path back to 2% can be “well managed”.
For now, Evans is still expecting that “some further rate increases may be appropriate over time”. He expects growth to be at around 1.75-2.00% this year. Still he maintained that current patient stance is appropriate given the “heightened uncertainty” including US-China trade war. He also emphasized that “if activity softens more than expected or if inflation and inflation expectations run too low, then policy may have to be left on hold – or perhaps even loosened – to provide the appropriate accommodation to obtain our objectives.”
Fed Rosengren prefers inflation range targeting
Ahead of a broad review on monetary policy framework, Boston Fed President Eric Rosengren said he’d prefer a range targeting approach on inflation. That is, Fed could be forced to accept inflation below 2% during recessions. On the other hand, Fed should commit to achieve above 2% inflation in good times. For example a range of 1.5-2.5%.
Rosengren echoed other platemakers’ comment that the current 2% target is “symmetric”. But in practice, people saw that figure as a “ceiling”. He added, “even though we’re only missing by a little bit it actually does matter if you miss by a little bit on a regular basis.”