Kansas City Fed President Esther George, who dissented the rate cut at July FOMC meeting, repeated her stance that the rate cut “wasn’t required”. She told CNBC that “with this very low unemployment rate, with wages rising, with the inflation rate staying close to the Fed’s target, I think we’re in a good place relative to the mandates that we’re asked to achieve.”
Though, she admitted that risks are tilted to the downside. She noted, “as you look at global growth weakening and as you look at the amount of uncertainty associated with some of these trade issues, I think both of those are weighing on the outlook. Whether they spill over in a way that we see in the real economy is what I’m watching for.”
Separately, she told Bloomberg TV that “We’re at a sort of equilibrium right now and I’d be happy to leave rates here absent seeing either some weakness or some strengthening, some kind of upside risk that would cause me to think rates should be somewhere else.”
