The normally congenial Fed members are starting to be a lot more vocal about their views.
Dallas Fed President Richard Fisher took a page out of Pope Francis’ playbook. The Pope has been warning of “spiritual Alzheimer’s” in the church that is blinding people of faith to the real problems. In a speech earlier this month, Fisher said his fellow Fed members are “at risk of monetary Alzheimer’s.”
“As I have repeatedly reminded my [Fed] colleagues, every single time the Fed has waited for full employment to be achieved before starting to withdraw accommodation, it has ended up driving the economy into recession,” Fisher said.
Yellen and other Fed members have stressed that any decision to raise interest rates this year will depend upon continued improvement in the U.S. economy, especially unemployment closing in on the 5% or so long-term goal (it’s currently 5.7%) and inflation nearing 2% (it’s currently a mere 0.8%).
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Tension is high, and the players are starting to take shots at each other.
“In the end, we get things done … Congress does not,” Dallas Fed President Fisher, who will retire in March, likes to remind America.
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