St. Louis Fed President James Bullard indicated he’s comfortable to wait for the impacts of the three rate cuts last year before deciding the next month on interest rates. He told Reuters, “we eased substantially in 2019” and, “we will see how much impact we have in the first half of 2020 and probably all the way through 2020, and then we will see where we are.”
He also noted that 2019 was “a year where we really came to grips with the idea that we were not going to go to 1990s or 2000 level interest rates in the United States.” “Not only did we quit trying…but we turned around and went the other way.”
For 2020, Bullard believes there could be positive surprise. If trade uncertainty lifts, US “might grow faster than 2019, and it is that kind of dynamic that would lead us back to a better expected inflation environment”.
