(Bloomberg) -- Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis President James Bullard, an outlier in his view that the U.S. central bank shouldn’t be raising interest rates, said the Fed should heed the signals from the bond market and dial down the urgency to be preemptive against fighting inflation.
“There is no reason to challenge the yield curve at this time,” he said in a Bloomberg Television interview with Michael McKee on Friday as the central bank’s annual policy symposium in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, gets under way. “Inflation is low, it is stable, it is barely up to target. We don’t need to be preemptive on the yield curve.”
Bullard, who votes next year on the policy-setting Federal Open Market Committee, reiterated positions that make him one of the Fed’s most dovish officials.
“I would rather not be calling rates accommodative right now,” he said. “I think we are at neutral or very close to neutral” interest rates, he said.
“It makes more sense to be gradualist in the current environment” because inflation is low and the Fed can move quickly to tamp it down if necessary, Bullard said.
Awaiting Powell
All eyes will be on remarks from Fed Chairman Jerome Powell at 10 a.m. New York time on Friday. He won’t be joined by his European Central Bank and Bank of Japan counterparts at this year’s Jackson Hole confab, with Mario Draghi and Haruhiko Kuroda’s names both missing from the list of attendees.
Other highlights from the attendee list include confirmation that none of the ECB’s executive board members will make the trip to the central-banking retreat in Wyoming’s remote Grand Teton National Park.
Policy makers gather against a backdrop of strong U.S. growth though the global economic outlook is less rosy. President Donald Trump’s trade war threatens China, while Turkey and other vulnerable emerging markets have been buffeted by financial market turmoil. Trump has also turned his ire on the Fed chief, who he picked, for raising interest rates.
Powell will be joined by both current Fed governors, Lael Brainard and Randal Quarles, as well as Fed governor nominee Marvin Goodfriend. All 11 current regional Fed presidents will be there. The San Francisco Fed has a vacancy at the top.
Investors will focus on Powell’s speech at 10 a.m. New York time on monetary policy in a changing economy for confirmation of an interest-rate increase at September’s meeting of the Federal Open Market Committee. Trump might complain about rate hikes, but minutes released Wednesday of U.S. central bankers’ policy deliberations at their last meeting showed they were on track to move in September.
The conference’s formal theme is the implications of increasing market concentration and what it means for competition, consumers and workers if a a few superstar firms such as Amazon.com Inc (NASDAQ:AMZN). control ever-larger market shares in many industries. Amazon chief economist Patrick Bajari has been invited.
Here’s What Happened Thursday:
- Two regional Federal Reserve bank chiefs say they favor further interest-rate increases and Trump criticism wouldn’t influence U.S. central bank policy.
- Powell’s Speech Title Mirrors 1998 Paper Reflecting Same Debate
- Jackson Hole History Suggests Market Calm to Follow Powell Debut
- Fed Staff Paper Warns Officials Not to Ignore Low Unemployment
