Atlanta Federal Reserve Bank President Dennis Lockhart spoke with FOX Business Network’s (FBN) Peter Barnes about quantitative easing and tapering the Federal Reserve’s bond-buying program. Lockhart discussed when tapering might begin, saying, “I wouldn’t rule out September” and that “between now and September 18, we will not have a lot of new information.” Dennis Lockhart went on to say that the economy “will continue on this sort of moderate growth path.”
Excerpts from the report are below.
Dennis Lockhart On whether the economy is strong enough to begin tapering:
“The outlook that I have in mind is that the economy will improve a little bit in the second half, will continue on this sort of moderate growth path, the inflation numbers will begin to edge toward our target of 2% and move up gradually, unemployment will come down, the jobs picture will continue to produce net jobs of 175 to 200 per month–if that outlook holds, then I think we can consider beginning to wean the economy from quantitative easing.”
Dennis Lockhart On when tapering might begin:
“I’m not hung up on any particular meeting. I wouldn’t rule out September as the meeting, but it could be later. One thing to keep in mind is between now and September 18, we will not have a lot of new information, so it depends I think for an individual policy maker how you’re actually building your case. Looking at it from my perspective. I’m looking at the incoming data as either undermining or supporting my view of the outlook. Therefore, it is not quite as high a bar as having to build a case from scratch for doing this.”
