St. Louis Fed President James Bullard said yesterday the US economy is sound despite trade uncertainty. And the “numbers here seem pretty good…2 percent growth. Nice job market. Low inflation. Good consumption growth”. The world is “in the middle of a global slowdown” and policymakers are “just going to have to assess how this is going to affect the U.S. economy.”
He also tried to talk down recent stock market declines. While the “steep selloff was big”, the market is “way up this year”. And, “even if nothing else was going on, you might have expected some repricing there.” He also added that “any (yield curve) inversion that is going to send a bearish signal for the U.S. economy would have to be sustained over a period of time,”
Bullard also rejected the idea of an inter-meeting emergency rate cut. He said “The timing is never critical on these things. A couple of weeks one way or another probably doesn’t matter. What matters is that you are in the right zone for interest rates and that you are reacting appropriately to incoming data.”
