Fed's Bullard speaking.
- The FOMC should have foregone December rate hike
- Fed must refocus on recentering inflation and inflation expectations on 2%
- good things are happening with the labor market
- FOMC was overly preemptive with inflation so low in December
- inflation is a little bit low
- there is a lot of uncertainty, shots out there hitting the economy
- every real estate person, most politicians want lower rates
- Fed has been doing well meeting mandates for full employment, low and stable inflation
- Fed has made some awfully good calls on policy
- he wouldn't want to prejudge Feds July decision
- he thinks trade uncertainty is slowing global growth, will feed back to US
- risk is that US growth will slow more sharply than expected
- he would like to take some insurance against sharper US slowdown
- global economy is impacting my decision-making
- it is not necessary to have any future rate cuts as unanimous;papering over differences is not the right way to go
- July cut would be insurance against low-inflation
- Wouldn't expect 25 basis point cut to have huge impact
- sustained inversion of yield curve pessimistic signal
Bullard is a dove. At the June FOMC meeting he voted for a 25 basis point cut. He has since said that a 50 bp cut was not warranted. His comment that the 25 basis point cut would be insurance is also a little less dovish for the dove.
