Actions speak louder than words, so we know by his votes that Philly Fed president Plosser scrapped his hawish voting stance, but he has now acknowledged the shift publicly, for the first time in my memory.
The commodity slump has allowed him to drop his inflation focus, he says. He warns against hasty, ill-thought out reforms and needlessly burdensome regulation. Don’t expect the Fed’s expanded regulatory portfolio to produce miracles in the future, he says, in essence.
Q4 2008 will be quite a bit weaker than Q3, Plosser says, but he holds out hope for growth in 2009.
