Fed can wait to adjust policy because job market is near full employment, Bostic says
The Fed should avoid policy volatility that can be troublesome to the public, Bostic said at an event in Alabama, adding that his "predisposition is to try not to do that" and to wait for "a little more clarity on where things are going."
"Now I feel we have the luxury to do that today because the labor market has been pretty much at full employment," Bostic said.
"Our maximum employment mandate is not at risk in the same way that the inflation mandate is," he said.
That said, the recent employment report for July, which showed far fewer jobs created last month than expected and a historically large downward revision in job growth in the previous two months, could change the conversation.
If the job market is substantially weaker than previously thought, "then maybe the risks are more in balance and we should be thinking about our ability to be patient is much less than it was before," Bostic said. "To me, that's the question we're going to try to have an answer for."
Getting a better understanding of the health of the job market is "really our task for the next five weeks or so" ahead of the Fed's September 16-17 policy meeting, he added.
Investors in recent days have come to fully price in the likelihood that the Fed next month will cut its benchmark overnight interest rate from the current 4.25%-4.50% range, where it has been since last December.
Asked about the effects of tariffs on the outlook for inflation and Fed policy, Bostic said the textbook case argues that the levies cause a one-time price increase that the U.S. central bank should not respond to. But what's different with the tariffs that President Donald Trump is imposing is that they are broader and higher than expected and also have a larger policy goal of reorienting global supply chains.
"You're going to see fundamental changes if this is successful, and if that's the case, then there's no reason you should expect that the post-tariff trajectory (for inflation) will look like the pre-tariff one," Bostic said. "It is actually a different economy."
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