By Michael S. Derby
NEW YORK (Reuters) -Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta President Raphael Bostic said on Thursday that he still thinks the U.S. central bank can cut its interest rate target once this year, while noting there’s a lot of uncertainty around that view as the economy undergoes considerable change.
Bostic said the forecast he offered earlier in the year of one rate cut was “kind of still where I am,” speaking before the Metro Atlanta Chamber. But he added “but I would just say, in today’s world, every point estimate or forecast has a wide confidence band around it, and so I’m not stuck on anything.”
Bostic said the current federal funds rate target range, now set at between 4.25% and 4.5%, is “marginally restrictive” amid an ongoing debate about whether that rate needs to be cut. Bostic said overall growth this year is likely to be “relatively tepid” before rebounding next year amid more clarity in the business world about the general state of U.S. economic policy. If that happens, “we would be in a position, we being the Fed, to start to bring our policy position back to a more neutral stance.”
He added that moving firmly along a path is important for monetary policy. “When the [Federal Open Market Committee] moves, I want to move in one direction and not be ratcheting up and then coming back down,” Bostic said. “We want to be unidirectional, because sort of the toggling approach historically has caused people to lose confidence in our ability to meet our mandates.”
Bostic spoke as the world’s top central bankers are heading to Jackson Hole, Wyoming for the Kansas City Fed’s annual research conference. The event features a hotly anticipated speech by Fed Chair Jerome Powell that could signal openness to cutting rates at the September policy meeting. Fed officials are in a challenging position, facing a slowing labor market at a time when inflation pressures are still above target and may rise further amid the Trump administration’s rapid increase in import taxes.
Fed meeting minutes released Wednesday showed officials pointing to potentially difficult policy trade-offs given this economic landscape. Meanwhile, the Fed faces constant and aggressive pressure from Trump and his allies to cut rates.
In his remarks, Bostic noted that Fed policy has been oriented to lowering inflation and that progress has been uneven. He noted the job market has seen some issues lately but he needs to see more data to confirm that hiring is truly deteriorating. Bostic said the economic landscape is “very much in a transitional period, and a lot of where I’m trying to position myself is to really be in the pathway of where transition is likely to go.”
(Reporting by Michael S. Derby; Editing by Alex Richardson and Chizu Nomiyama )
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