Top official says Federal Reserve can't risk being too late with rate cuts

WASHINGTON (AP) — A top Federal Reserve official warned Wednesday that the Fed needs to cut its key interest rate before the job market weakened further or it would risk moving too late and potentially imperil the economy.

In an interview with The Associated Press, Austan Goolsbee, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, said that because the Fed's rate decisions typically affect the economy only after an extended time lag, it must avoid waiting too long before reducing rates.

With inflation steadily easing, the Fed is widely expected to start cutting its benchmark rate next month from a 23-year high. Goolsbee declined to say how large a rate cut he would favor. Most economists envision a modest quarter-point cut next month, with similar rate cuts to follow in November and December. The Fed's key rate affects many consumer and business loan rates.

“There is a danger when central banks fall behind events on the ground,” Goolsbee said. “It's important that we not assume that if the labor market were to deteriorate past normal, that we could react and fix that, once it's already broken.”

Goolsbee spoke with the AP just hours after the government reported that consumer prices eased again last month, with yearly inflation falling to 2.9%, the lowest level in more than three years. That is still modestly above the Fed's 2% inflation target but much lower than the 9.1% peak it reached two years ago.

Goolsbee emphasized that Congress has given the Fed a dual mandate: To keep prices stable and to seek maximum employment. After two years of focusing exclusively on inflation, Goolsbee said, Fed officials now should pay more attention to the job market, which he said is showing worrying signs of cooling. Chair Jerome Powell has made similar comments in recent months.

“The law gives us two things that we’re supposed to be watching, and one of those things has come way down, and it looks very much like what we said we’re targeting,” Goolsbee said, referring to inflation. “And the other is slowly getting worse, and we want it to stabilize.”

Goolsbee's urgency regarding rate cuts stands in contrast to some of the 18 other officials who participate in the Fed's policy decisions. On Saturday, Michelle Bowman, who serves on the Fed's Board of Governors, sounded more circumspect. She said that if inflation continued to fall, it would “become appropriate to gradually lower” rates.

The Chicago Fed president also stressed that as inflation falls, inflation-adjusted interest rates in effect rise. Higher rates mean that the Fed's policies are doing more to restrict borrowing and spending and to potentially cool the economy.

“Inflation, it’s clear, has been coming down for some time, and we’re quite restrictive,” Goolsbee said.

Adjusted for inflation, Goolsbee noted that the Fed’s key rate has increased even as inflation has fallen and is at the highest point in decades. And he pointed out that the job market is cooling.

He noted that Fed officials, in their latest quarterly economic projections, predicted that they would cut their key rate at least five times by the end of 2025. Those forecasts assumed that the unemployment rate would be 4% at the end of this year, Goolsbee noted, yet the rate is now 4.3%.

And the policymakers also forecast that inflation, according to the Fed's preferred measure, would be 2.8% by the end of this year. But it is already below that now, at 2.6%.

“In the long arc, it’s clear inflation’s coming way down,” Goolsbee said. “That’s what the path to 2% looks like. It’s clear what the trend is. We’re way, way down from from where we were. And the job market is cooling, and it needs to settle at full employment.”