Fed's Bullard speaking.

Fed's Bullard
  • 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.