Goolsbee Eyes Credit Channel, Stressing Need For Patience & Prudence

NPR Marketplace has run an interview with Chicago Fed President Goolsbee (’23 voter).

• Goolsbee deployed a similar tone to what was seen in his most recent address, which came down on the dovish side of the current Fed spectrum.
• He told NPR “how much squeezing is going to be coming from the bank side I think is going to matter for whether this economy is going to slow down.”
• “My message is be prudent, be patient, if banks are pulling back it behooves us to pay attention to the data and ask how much of our normal monetary policy job is getting done for us by the credit conditions.”
• “The job market is by far the strongest part of the economy.”
• “Inflation - there’s been some improvement, but in a way that’s the worst part of the economy,” highlighting that it has “more persistent than we wanted.”
• Still, Goolsbee pushed back against the idea that he had mind his made up re: his decision ahead of the May FOMC, noting that “we’ve still got a couple of weeks before the actual meeting. So if anybody imputed some specific basis points of what I was for, that would be inaccurate.”