a ways to go. |
At this point, I believe inflation and inflation expectations will be largely contained by competitive market forces and continuing adjustments to the stance of monetary policy, |
Given the steady diet of 'measured' rate hikes the Fed has provided in the past year and a half, many of you may be wondering when enough is enough. Let me first respond by saying, the closer we get, the less explicit we can be on that point; it's my personal opinion that as policymakers we should resist the temptation to say more than we know at any given time. |
I don't see anything at the moment to cause me to be unduly concerned |
I don't think it is possible, speaking for myself, to know whether there will need to be additional tightening moves or whether we are at a place we can hold for a while. We are at a balanced point. |
I don't think we really know yet fully how that is going to play out. |
I don't want to see inflation move measurable higher. |
I think monetary policy coming out of the 2001 recession did what it was intended to do, which was cushion the interest-sensitive sectors of the economy, including housing. |
In some of the hottest coastal markets in the Southeast, I've heard of sharp adjustments and sudden reversals of the frenzied speculation we saw earlier, with prices falling sharply in some markets. |
In the long run, economic growth will continue to get an important boost from the development of new technologies and the discovery of new ways to work better, faster and smarter, |
In the long term, though, I think the moderation of growth that we'll witness in 2001 will be a mostly healthy thing, |
Over the period ahead, as the full effects of the sequence of monetary policy moves plays out, I expect that output growth will settle on a path that is somewhat below what we saw in the first quarter, probably growing at close to the economy's potential. |
The closer we get, the less explicit we can be on that point. |
The Fed is firmly committed to resisting unwelcome rises in inflation. |
We don't yet know the full economic effect of the policy moves we have already made. In the months ahead, we'll have to watch the data very carefully to make sure that growth is still on track and inflation expectations are well anchored. |