Press Conferences
“It’s really hurting us that we’ve got this kind of alternate meeting thing,” Bullard said. “I think we should make all meetings ex-ante identical. You should have press conferences at every meeting. I’ve long been an advocate of this.”
Fed Chair Janet Yellen has stressed that every FOMC session is a “live possibility” for a policy move.
“I take her at her word,” Bullard said. “That is on the plus side. On the negative side, there isn’t that much data between the March meeting and the April meeting. So I don’t know where the committee will come out.”
In quarterly estimates submitted for the March 15-16 FOMC meeting, nine policy makers predicted two rate hikes in 2016. Seven officials foresaw three or more increases this year, while one projected just one move.
Chicago Fed President Charles Evans said Tuesday that two rate steps this year are “not at all unreasonable,” while his colleague from Philadelphia, Patrick Harker, said he would like to see policy makers tightening borrowing costs “a little faster.”
“I am not revealing my dot,” Bullard said. “I want to get out of the game of how many rate increases this year.”
Bullard said his view to hold off on further increases at the first two meetings this year was driven by a decline in market-based measures of inflation expectations.
“I didn’t want to be raising rates further in an environment where we had declining inflation expectations,” he said. Since mid-February, ”they have bounced back up” so “that is making me feel better. We are moving in the right direction.”