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 on Friday as the central bank’s annual policy symposium in Jackson Hole, Wyo., 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.
