(Bloomberg) - Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis President Neel Kashkari said the U.S. central bank shouldn’t overreact to elevated inflation even as it causes pain for Americans, because it is likely to prove temporary.
“The high prices that families are paying, those are real and people are experiencing that pain right now,” Kashkari said Sunday on CBS’ “Face the Nation.”
“We need to take it very seriously, but my view is we also need to not overreact to some of these temporary factors even though the pain is real,” he said.
The consumer price index increased 6.2% in the 12 months through October, the fastest annual pace since 1990, according to Labor Department data released last week. That has increased the pressure on the Fed from some economists to accelerate its withdrawal of support for the U.S. economy.
Former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers, speaking Sunday on CNN’s “Fareed Zakaria GPS,” said inflation’s momentum has built up to a point where “it’s going to take some significant policy adjustment or some unfortunate accident that slows the economy before inflation gets back to the 2% range.”
Fed policy makers announced Nov. 3 they had agreed to begin reducing monthly bond purchases designed to boost the economy by suppressing borrowing costs. They left their benchmark interest rate in a range between zero and 0.25%.
Fed Choices
Kashkari said the move was “appropriate” and stressed that moving too quickly to remove the Fed’s support could end up hurting the economy more than it helps on the inflation front.
“When we adjust monetary policy it acts with a lag,” he said. “So if we overreact to a short-term price increase, that can set the economy back over the long term.”
Kashkari, who doesn’t vote this year on the policy making Federal Open Market Committee, said he expects heightened demand connected to previous fiscal stimulus and supply constraints caused by the pandemic to slowly ease.
Asked about President Joe Biden’s pending decision whether to reappoint Fed Chair Jerome Powell to another four-year term, or perhaps choose Fed Governor Lael Brainard to succeed him, Kashkari said both are capable and would be likely to pursue similar monetary policies.
“Both of them have been instrumental in the new framework that we’ve adopted in terms of not shortcutting the recovery, and I’m confident that either of them as chair would continue to see that through,” he said.
The Fed adopted a new long-term strategy in August 2020 that takes a more aggressive approach to reducing unemployment based on a weakened connection between low unemployment and inflation seen over the past 25 years.
By Christopher Condon
