Chicago Federal Reserve President Austan Goolsbee said Friday he’s leery of cutting interest rates too quickly as threats increase both to inflation and employment.
In a “Squawk Box” interview on CNBC, the central banker indicated that pressure is coming to both sides of the Fed’s so-called dual mandate of stable prices and low unemployment.
“This uptick of inflation that we’ve been seeing, coupled with the payroll jobs numbers deteriorating, have put the central bank in a bit of a sticky spot where you’re getting deterioration of both sides of the mandate at the same time,” Goolsbee said. “I’m a little wary about front-loading too many rate cuts and just counting on the inflation going away.”
The Federal Open Market Committee voted in September to lower its benchmark interest rate by a quarter percentage point. Participants at the meeting indicated that two more cuts could be on the way before the end of the year.
Goolsbee is a voting member this year on the FOMC.
Though he expressed some concern about both inflation and the jobs picture, he added that data “continues to point to a pretty stable labor market.”
“I believe that the underlying economy can afford rates to come down over time, in a gradual basis, a fair amount from where they are now,” Goolsbee said.
