Evans Continues To See Inflation Subsiding

Chicago Fed Pres Evans continues to burnish dovish credentials. Not giving much away on his preferred rate hike path in his speech today but here's the key passage re current monetary policy (and remember he's a 2023 voter):

• "as we move through the year, we should gain more evidence on the sources of persistence and the sources of improvement in the inflation outlook. At the moment, to me it still appears that inflation is due more to real-side factors, which relative price signals should eventually correct, than to persistent nominal monetary phenomena. But how this plays out will be key for my monetary policy decision-making over the year. “Careful monitoring” will continue to be the watchwords."
  
• The last time we'd heard from Evans was prior to the January FOMC: he had similar sentiments about inflation then, and seemed fine with March liftoff, saying 3 hikes in 2022 were “probably a good opening bid this year depending on how the data roll out…it could be four if the data don’t improve quickly enough on inflation.”
• Will be interesting to see if the January CPI figure was enough for him to change that view (probably not, given his inflation outlook for the year as a whole).